


Commander In Chief

by directorsharpie



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Avalance!President AU, F/F, Fluff, Minor Angst, bodyguard Sara, kind of slow burn, presidential candidate Ava
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-14 03:42:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28539039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/directorsharpie/pseuds/directorsharpie
Summary: “I can’t run again, and I have been thinking long and hard about who I would like to endorse in the election next November. There are many people who are more than capable and are qualified for this job, but I don’t think there is anybody better or more capable than you to take over as President, I want to endorse you, Ava.”orAn Avalance President AU.
Relationships: Sara Lance/Ava Sharpe
Comments: 56
Kudos: 136





	1. one

Ava’s life is hectic, but her job is even more hectic. As the Secretary of State, she doesn’t get a minute to breathe during the day because she’s stuck in meetings one minute and the next she is being whisked away to answer some questions from the press. Most days she doesn’t even have time to eat lunch, so she just has a power bar or something to keep her blood sugars up just enough to make it through the rest of the day. 

Today is no different, the moment she steps into her office she is bombarded with stuff that she has to do. There are papers and files strewn across the dark wooden desk that is standing proudly in the middle of the room. She lets out a sigh, hangs her coat up by the door, and sits down at her desk. But, before she can even begin to think about where to start, there’s a knock at her door. 

“Come in,” she says, with a hint of frustration in her voice because she has so much work to do and she’s already being distracted after being there for five minutes. The door swings open to reveal Zari Tarazi, her right-hand woman. 

“Good morning Madam Secretary,” Zari says, her hands clutching a binder against her chest and a soft smile gracing her lips. She steps a little further into Ava’s office, letting the door close behind her. Ava looks up at her with a cautious look on her face, knowing that it’s never going to be a good day when Zari isn’t already sitting in her office ready to catch her up on the latest gossip. Whether that be about something that her boyfriend, John Constantine, did the night before or just something that she had seen online about some celebrity.

As much as Ava pretends that she doesn’t, she likes it when Zari just sits opposite her while she is doing her work and rambles about something that, most of the time, Ava has no idea what she is talking about. It’s her only form of entertainment as she goes over some dull paperwork. Zari gets so passionate sometimes when she is talking to Ava, it brings a bright spark to her chocolate-colored eyes. 

It’s comforting to see, never in Ava’s life has somebody been so excited and happy to share intimate details of their life with her before. Even from an early age, Ava wasn’t that great at making friends and that carried on into high school and then in college. So she hadn’t really had the chance to gossip with someone, even if she should be doing work, and the fact that Zari does it with her so willingly and so comfortably, makes her feel all warm and fuzzy inside. 

However, there wasn’t an excited glint in Zari’s eyes today. Instead, she just placed the binder on the desk in front of Ava and remained standing in front of the desk. Ava eyes the binder suspiciously, and opens it with one finger, just enough to peak at the first page. But, the front page doesn’t tell her what is in the binder, she looks up at Zari with confusion written all over her face. 

“It’s the files of your new security team, I know you didn’t ask for it but I just thought that you would want to get to know more about them and their backgrounds. They’re going through security and then I’ll bring them in to meet you unless you have something more important you need to do, Gary hasn’t given me your schedule for today,” Zari says and Ava pulls the binder towards her to get a closer look at it.

“No, bring them in when they’re ready, I just have a few things to finish off from yesterday before I can get today’s things done,” Ava smiles at her friend before she exits the room, leaving Ava alone once again. 

She has a quick flip through the binder, before going back to the first page. Her eyes scan the page and they land on a picture in the top right corner of the page, it’s the head security guard. She has blonde hair that is scraped up into a ponytail two loose strands framing her perfectly structured face, in the picture, and brilliant blue eyes that remind Ava of the ocean. She takes in the smaller details of the woman, like the freckles that are littered all over her face, and the small, barely-there smile on her face causing her dimples to stand out. 

Her eyes flit over the page to the small list of important details about the blonde woman in the picture. 

“Sara Lance,” Ava says out loud, and the second the words leave her lips they sound familiar and she has no idea why. She has never seen this woman before, she would remember somebody as pretty as her. 

Before she has a chance to try to think about the name a little harder and why she recognizes it, there’s a knock on her office door. “Come in,” Ava calls out and the door opens to reveal Zari once again, but this time there are a couple of other people with her. 

They all step into the room, Ava stands up and walks around her desk to greet the new people. They’re standing in a line, each with their hands behind their back and stoic looks on their faces. Ava steps closer to them and they each introduce themselves, starting with the youngest looking one. He has longish dark brown hair, Ava holds her hand out for him to shake before introducing herself.

“Behrad Tarazi,” he says giving her hand a firm shake, before resuming his original position with his back straight and his hands clasped together behind his back. 

When Ava hears his last name, her face scrunches up in realization and her head snaps towards Zari, who is standing close beside her. “Wait, Tarazi, as in- are you two related?”

“Yeah, he’s my little brother,” Zari says with a soft smile on her face. 

Ava nods her head and gives them a firm smile, before moving onto the woman standing beside Behrad, she introduces herself as Charlie Jiwe. Her name sounds very familiar to Ava, she also looks a hell of a lot like her brother’s girlfriend. However, she chooses not to dwell on it, already far too behind her schedule as it is. So she moves onto the last woman standing there, she recognizes her from the binder that Zari had given her earlier that morning. Sara Lance.

They shake hands and before anyone else can speak, Ava says, “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude, I just have so much work to do before the trip and I’m already behind schedule.”

They each nod and wave it off before leaving the room with Zari, who is probably going to take them on a tour of the building, so that they know the ins and outs of the place; in case of emergency. Usually, Ava would have taken the time to get to know each of them a little, because she finds it slightly difficult to trust people she doesn’t even know, especially when said people are the ones who are responsible for keeping her alive and making sure that no harm comes to her. 

However, she figures that there will be plenty of time for her to get to know each of them a little better and in the meantime turns her attention back to the work on her desk. She sits down with a sigh and begins to sort the papers into different piles, from the most important work to the least important work. It’s a tedious job, but it’s practically impossible for her to even begin to do work if her desk is a mess. Everything has a place and everything needs to be put in its place for her to be able to do her work efficiently. 

Luckily she gets a good amount of work done and by lunchtime, she is almost caught up with her schedule. She glances over at the clock on the wall, 12:30 pm, she contemplates whether or not she has enough time to be able to eat her lunch and ultimately decides that lunch can wait until she has finished everything that needs to be done. 

She decides to get up and read through the paperwork in her hand over on the couch at the opposite end of her office; just to be able to have a change of scenery. Even if it is just looking at her office from a slightly different angle, at least sitting on the couch allows her to look out of the window. 

On the streets down below her, there’s a gaggle of students standing in a half-circle around what she assumes is their teachers. There are also a few kids who are standing away from the group, clearly unhappy about being forced onto the trip. Her eyes flit to another group, they look a lot older and she guesses that they are tourists, each of them have a camera in their hands or hanging around their necks, snapping pictures of the building from various angles. She’s a little confused as to why they would travel to come and see the building, it’s nothing special, especially compared to other government buildings like the White House. 

She shrugs her shoulders and tears her eyes away from the window and focuses on the papers in her hands. She ends up reading the same line four times before she is able to fully focus on reading it, she begins with a quick skim read through the file, and then she reads through it again, this time using a highlighter to pick out the more important parts of it. She doesn’t get a chance to do any more than that because there’s a knock on her office door. 

She rolls her eyes before calling out, “come in!” 

The door opens to reveal Gary, her assistant. He seems a little more reserved than usual, and that makes Ava slightly nervous because that means something bad has happened and he is there to deliver the news to her. 

“Good afternoon, Madam Secretary,” he says bowing his head a little.

“Good afternoon, you don’t need to bow to me Gary I’m not royalty, I have told you this so many times,” Ava says with a slight annoyance in her voice, not necessarily aimed at Gary, more at the fact that her work has been interrupted for the second time that day. “What is it?” she asks, chewing her lip slightly when she sees Gary playing with his fingers, it was one of the things he did when he was nervous. 

“You have been summoned to the White House, President Taylor wants to meet with you.” The words tumble out of Gary’s mouth at a hundred miles a minute, and Ava finds it a little difficult to understand him at first. But, her brain catches up with her and she swallows hard. Her mind running through the million and one different reasons as to why the President of the United States, would want to set up a random meeting with her on a Thursday afternoon. 

“Oh, okay, did he give you a time?” Ava asks, trying her best to keep her nerves at bay.

Gary nods his head and glances down at the piece of paper in his hands before saying, “yes, he wants you there at one fifteen.”

Ava slowly nods her head before glancing at the clock on the wall and realizes that it is already twelve thirty-six. Meaning that she will have to leave in around ten minutes to be able to get to the white house and go through all of the security measures. 

“Okay, does Zari know about this? The last time I saw her she was showing my new security team around the building,” Ava says as she rushes around the room, shoving things into her satchel. 

“Uh, yes they are all ready to go, she is just going over a few things with them,” Gary explains as he grabs Ava’s coat for her and hands it to her. She slips it on and they leave the room. As she heads towards the car that is waiting out front for her, her steps are so quick and full of purpose that Gary has to do a little jog every now and then just to keep up with her. 

There are two of her new security guards walking in front of her, Sara and Behrad are practically marching in front of her and Charlie is walking behind with Zari and Gary. They reach the car and Sara is holding the door open for her, she thanks the smaller woman softly before stepping into the car and settling in on the backseat. Sara and Behrad sit up front, while Zari sits at the very back of the SUV with Gary. 

He is talking her ear off. Although she isn’t paying any attention to the man, instead she is just staring out of the window, watching the streets of Washington DC pass by. 

“Do you have any idea what this is about?” Ava asked anxiously. There are so many different reasons that the President could want to speak to her, but her mind seemed to only focus on the negative ones, like him firing her. 

He has no reason to fire her, she is exceptional at her job. Probably, the best that the country has seen in years. But, the thought is still there floating around her mind. 

They finally make it to the White House and the drive over there felt as though it lasted for hours when in reality it’s a mere ten-minute drive. Going through security to enter the building takes longer than it did to drive there. Ava is getting a little impatient, she is through security first and wants nothing more than to just go to the Oval Office to find out what is going on and settle her nerves.

Instead, she has to wait for her own security team to be cleared by the White House’s security team. Ava has to be there to sign some things to allow them to have badges, to make it easier for them to access the building in the future. 

She goes as fast as she possibly can because a glance at her watch tells her that she has less than five minutes to finish signing the papers before she has to rush over to the other end of the west wing, where the oval office is located. 

When the necessary papers are signed, she and her team are finally able to head towards the oval office. 

When they arrive, Ava shoves her bag into Gary’s arms before she smooths her pantsuit out. Zari stops her just as she’s about to enter the room, she fixes Ava’s hair for her. It isn’t until the little strands of flyaway hair are stuck to her head and her bun is in perfect condition, tied tightly at the base of her head. 

“Thank you, Zari,” Ava nods her head at the dark-haired woman before taking a deep breath and following the President’s assistant into the Oval Office. 

Her nerves are through the roof when she sees the President standing by the window, just staring out of it with a drink in his hand. 

“Madame Secretary, Sir,” his assistant says softly, causing him to turn his attention away from the window and onto the two women standing in his office. 

“Thank you, Olivia, Secretary Sharpe, have a seat please,” he says, gesturing towards the two couches that are located in the middle of the office. Olivia leaves the room and Ava takes a seat.

As she sits down she notices the very serious look on the President’s face. Usually when they talk he is all smiles and it is never as formal as this feels. It makes Ava nervous, her hands start to feel clammy again, she subtly wiped them on her pants but that didn’t stop the nerves. She and the President sat across from one another, in silence. It was a little awkward and Ava wasn’t sure whether she was supposed to speak or not.

Luckily, he broke the silence, “I bet you’re wondering why I asked for this meeting to be set up, on such short notice, which sorry about that by the way, I hope you weren’t too busy.” He chuckled and Ava just shook her head and waved it off, as if she wasn’t buried up to her head in paperwork. 

“It’s okay, I mean I do have a few things to take care of-” Ava began to say but the man sitting across from her cut her off. 

She tried not to let her anger show, it happens all the time. She is a woman in politics, after all, a profession that is predominantly old-white men who think they’re superior to everyone around them. The President is no exception to that. In fact, he probably cuts her off more than anybody she has ever worked with. So after working with him for almost six years, she has learned that it is best to just shut up and let him say whatever he needs to say. 

“As you know, I am coming up to the end of my second term, meaning I can’t run again,” he says slowly, almost as if he is waiting for her to acknowledge that she understands what he is talking about. Another thing that got under Ava’s skin, her colleagues like to act as though she has no idea how politics actually works. It’s as though they don’t realize that without her, there doing her job every day, the country would be falling apart. But, for the sake of her keeping that job, she tends to keep her mouth shut and tries her very best not to let it bother her. 

She nods her head and he takes that as a sign to carry on, “I can’t run again, and I have been thinking long and hard about who I would like to endorse in the election next November. There are many people who are more than capable and are qualified for this job, but I don’t think there is anybody better or more capable than you to take over as President, I want to endorse you, Ava.” He says and at the last part Ava’s head shoots up to look him in the eyes. 

She genuinely believed that he brought her in there to tell her that he had chosen someone else to endorse. Her being President was her dream, ever since she was old enough to understand and get involved with politics. However, she had a very tight-knit plan for her entire life, and becoming President was definitely on there, just not this early on in her life. 

“I, uh- wow- I don’t know what to say, I am honored. Thank you, mister President,” Ava says, with a smile so big that it almost reaches from ear to ear. She stands up quickly from the couch and moves closer to him to be able to shake his hand. 

He gives her hand a firm shake before smiling at her, it’s a proud smile that reaches his dark brown eyes and makes them glisten. 

They talk over a few important details before he is called away to another meeting. Ava steps out of the office and walks through the West Wing in search of her team. She finds them sitting in the lobby. When Zari sees her walking towards her, she jumps up from her seat with wide eyes and a questioning look on her face. 

“So? What happened? Or can you not talk about it?” She asks, Ava just shakes her head, walks by her, and grabs her bag from Gary. 

“Let’s go, I need to get back to work,” Ava says, already walking away from them and towards the exit. They all jump up and follow her out of the building and out to the SUV they arrived in. Each of them sitting in their previous seats as they drove through the city, which is now considerably busier than it was when they arrived earlier that afternoon. They’re stuck in traffic when they’re almost back at the Truman Building. The entire road was stood still, and it didn’t look like they would be moving any time soon. 

Ava lets out a frustrated sigh, as she looks out of the window at people walking by. She feels a little jealous of them, being able to move about without having to have security attached to them. She would be back in her office by now if she didn’t have to stay with her security team. 

“He wants me to run for President and he wants to endorse me in the upcoming election,” Ava blurts out, breaking the silence in the car. Zari’s head snaps towards her and she notices Sara raise her eyebrows and glance at her with a surprised look on her face, through the rearview mirror. 

“What? That’s amazing Ava, we should be celebrating, why don’t you seem happy about this? I thought this is what you wanted,” Zari says a little confused as to why Ava is acting as though she has just received some bad news rather than probably the greatest news of her life. 

“I just, I have a plan, for, like my entire life, I know where I am going to be a year from now, even five years from now, and this disrupts the entire plan. I don’t know if I’m ready to do this, what if I’m not good enough? I feel like I need a few more years,” Ava says softly, and everyone in the car is looking at her with confusion written on their faces because Ava is probably more ready for this than anybody else who is deciding to run for President, even a blind person could see that. 

“Ava, you are so ready for this, you can’t plan every second of your life, things are constantly changing it is literally impossible to stick to a plan like that. I think everyone in this car will agree with me when I say that I think you are ready, you have already achieved so much for yourself and this country, America would be lucky to have you as their commander in chief,” Zari says softly, trying her very best to reassure her friend. She can see the anxiety rising within Ava, the cogs in her head running a mile a minute as she overthinks every single little detail of how her running for President could go good or bad. 

“She’s right, you’re amazing Secretary Sharpe, my mom and I would definitely vote for you,” Gary says from his seat in the back of the car, Ava turns to look at him, he has a huge grin on his face as he gives her two thumbs up. Ava lets out a soft chuckle at the man, before turning in her seat again.

“I just wish that he waited until at least after the trip to Europe, I already have so much work to do, and then I have to spend two weeks convincing other world leaders to join the new global environment initiative, I just-” Ava cuts herself off and takes a deep breath, to calm herself down. 

She knows that it isn’t really going to be an issue, she has had so much more work to do in the past. It just feels so overwhelming to her. All she wants to do is go home, have a bubble bath with a glass of wine, and then curl up in bed. But she can’t do that, she has at least two more meetings to sit through and a huge heap of paperwork to get through. 

Luckily, they get through the traffic quicker than expected and Ava is whisked away to her next meeting. It lasts for less than half an hour, and in her mind, it was a complete waste of time and should have just been put in an email. However, she rushes back to her office to get the rest of the paperwork done and filed away. 

She finally finishes everything that needed to be done, but it’s almost ten pm, and with a grumble of her stomach she realizes that she hasn’t eaten since yesterday at dinner time. She makes sure that her office is clean and everything is filed away and in its proper place, before grabbing her bag and coat.

She leaves her office to find Sara and Behrad sitting on the chairs outside of her office. Ava’s eyes widen in shock, her old security team never stayed past six pm, always leaving her to uber home. Which now that she thinks about it, probably wasn’t a good thing. However, she realizes how late it is and immediately feels bad that they’re still sitting there, although the other woman, Charlie, is no longer with them. 

“You didn’t have to wait here,” Ava says softly causing the two of them to look up at her. Sara slaps Behrad’s arm, silently indicating for him to get off of his phone, he gets the message and quickly shoves it into his pocket. 

“It is quite literally our job to protect you, Secretary Sharpe, Zari warned us that you like to stay late, Charlie had to head home but the car is waiting for you out front if you’re ready to leave?” Sara asks and Ava nods her head and gives her a tight-lipped smile.

“I can handle myself you know, my last security team never waited for me to finish my work, I used to uber home,” Ava says as they leave the building, almost as if she feels the need to prove herself to the small blonde woman. 

“I’m sure you can, but we don’t want to take any risks,” Sara says, opening the car door for Ava to get into the back seat of the SUV. She looks at Sara with a soft smile on her face before climbing in. 

The ride to her apartment is mostly silent with the exception of Sara and Behrad making a small comment every now and then. 

The sky is pitch black, with clouds covering the moon slightly. The stars were barely visible with the bright lights of the city. But, this is always Ava’s favorite part of the day. Coming home when it’s dark means that she gets to enjoy the city in all of its glory, the whole city is lit up and the Washington Monument is visible for the entire drive. Even though it looks the same every time she looks at the monument, she can never seem to take her eyes off of the thing. 

Ever since she was a little girl and she visited Washington DC on a school trip, her dream has always been to move to the city. The first thing that they visited on the trip was the monument, so it has always been there in the back of her mind, as a little reminder that she has achieved over half of the goals that she had set for herself as an ambitious fourteen-year-old. So, it always gave her a little bit of excitement and hope, being able to see the monument every day. 

It reminds her just how proud she should be of herself and how much she has overcome throughout her life. 

She is ripped away from her thoughts when suddenly the car is no longer moving and Sara is standing with the car door open and a soft smile on her face. She quickly gets out of the car, after thanking Behrad for the ride. 

She walks up the small staircase to her front door and is fishing in her pockets for her keys to get inside when she notices Sara standing beside her. 

“You don’t have to follow me inside, I’m sure nothing bad is going to happen on my doorstep,” Ava says with a mixture of amusement and slight frustration at the fact that Sara didn’t think that she is capable enough to let herself into her own home, without getting in some sort of danger. 

“I’m sure nothing bad will happen on your doorstep, but as I said before it is my job to protect you, and until you are inside safe and sound I will be here by your side because you can never be too sure,” Sara says and Ava just narrows her eyes and nods her head slightly before turning her attention back to finding her keys. 

She finds them and quickly unlocks the door, “I’m surprised you aren’t insisting on checking my apartment for any form of danger,” Ava teases. 

“I mean I could if that would make you feel safe,” Sara says with a smirk.

“It would not, goodnight Miss Lance,” Ava says before stepping inside. 

“Goodnight Madame Secretary,” Sara mock salutes her before turning on her heel and heading back to the car. 

Ava rolls her eyes and closes the door. She kicks off her shoes and puts them in the correct place by the door, along with her bag and coat, before heading to the kitchen to find something substantial to eat. At that moment, she has never been more grateful that her mom insists on making her premade meals, just to make sure that she has something to eat; because she knows that her daughter has tendencies to get too focused on work that she forgets to eat or simply chooses not to because of her schedule. 

She tosses the Tupperware box into the microwave and scrolls through her phone as she waits for the food to warm up. There’s a text from Zari and her brother Nate, she is about to respond to Nate’s rambling about some new conspiracy theory he has stumbled upon when the microwave dings and she forgets all about her phone.

She quickly eats the food, before heading upstairs and running a bubble bath, she gets in with a glass of her favorite red wine in her hand. Her eyes start to feel heavy after a while and the water is getting slightly cold, so she figures that she should probably get out and head to bed; because if not she will definitely end up falling asleep in the bath, that has happened more times than she would like to admit. 

Her pajamas are already neatly laid out at the end of her bed from that morning. She dries herself off with a towel and changes into them before crawling into bed. Almost as soon as her head hits the pillow she is out like a light and the stresses of the day are momentarily forgotten.


	2. two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team finds themselves in London, Ava is trying her best to do a good job and she and Sara get to spend some time together.

Just a few days after her meeting with the President about him wanting to endorse her in the next election, Ava and her team are halfway to London; the first stop on their tour of Europe. 

Usually, the trips to other countries are one of her favorite things about her job, despite her having to work the majority of the time that she is there, it feels good to be able to get away from the same four walls of her office. 

However, this time she is not excited one bit. She is putting so much more pressure on herself to go above and beyond because while nobody outside of her team and the President knows that she is considering running for President, she feels as though she needs to be on top form. She feels that if she is anything less than that then she is going to fail as President before she even starts the campaigning. She never says any of this out loud though, she just keeps it to herself and lets the anxiety build further. 

She’s sitting at the back of the plane, reading over her speech that she is scheduled to give at an event in London. There are a few tweaks that she wants to make to it, so she leaves the makeshift office at the back of the plane and goes in search of Mick Rory. 

He was originally a part of her security team, but it turns out he is a very talented writer. They had him write a few speeches for her and they ended up being a hit, so they decided to keep him on as her writer. During his change in roles, the two of them got very close. Before he took on the new job, they never really got along, it always felt like they were too different to even be civil towards one another. Despite her life literally being in his hands the majority of the time. 

However, to write effective speeches for her meant that they needed to get over their differences and work on getting to know one another better. As a result of that Ava accidentally inserted herself into Mick’s life and his daughter now refers to her as ‘aunt Ava’. It scared her a little at first because throughout her entire life getting close to people always tended to end badly for her. 

But, Lita is different. The only other young people in her life are her cousin’s kids, and she isn’t all that close to either her cousin or her children. Nate is absolutely not ready to have kids just yet (despite the constant hints from their mother), so Lita is the closest thing she has to a niece, and she is one of Ava’s favorite people. 

She is able to be her true, authentic self around Lita without any judgment and vice versa. Around her, she feels like a teenager again, like she is gaining back all of the years that she lost because of her parents and her peers. She and Lita sometimes spend their days off going to the mall, or the cinema, sitting on the couch eating ice-cream and talking about Lita’s crushes, or Lita just turns up at Ava’s house whenever she has a bad day and needs someone to talk to without being judged. 

“Oh, uh sorry, I didn’t realize anybody was waiting to use the bathroom,” Sara says slightly awkwardly as she steps out of the bathroom. Her presence brings Ava back to reality and she realizes that she was looking for Mick. 

“Oh, no it’s okay I’m looking for Mick, I assumed he would be in there,” Ava’s hands clasp together behind her back.

“He is over there, I’m sure you won’t have trouble finding him just follow the sound of snoring,” Sara says with a chuckle.

“Right, yes, thank you,” Ava gives her a tight-lipped smile and sets out to find Mick. 

She finds him sitting towards the front of the plane. His head is tilted to the side, leaning on his shoulder with his mouth open slightly, and snoring sounds filled the area. She rolls her eyes and gently nudges his shoulder, it isn’t uncommon for Mick to fall asleep during long journeys, or any journey at all. The nudge doesn’t do anything, in fact, it seems to make him snore louder, so she shakes him this time and his snoring stops before he startles awake with a displeased grunt. 

“I need you to make a few changes to the speech,” Ava whisper shouts, to try and avoid waking the other people around them. Although, she isn’t really sure how they ended up falling asleep in the first place with the sound of Mick’s snoring. 

“Can’t that wait, I’m busy here,” he grumbles, and Ava just rolls her eyes and walks away. He gets the hint and reluctantly follows her to the office space at the back of the plane. 

They sit down at the small desk in the corner and they talk through the speech that he had written and re-written, what felt like a million times already. However, with the amount of time that he has been working with Ava, he knows how she gets with things like this. It needs to be absolutely perfect or else it isn’t going to work for her. 

Luckily, Mick makes the changes pretty quickly and gives the speech back to her. She reads it over and this time has no other changes to make and is actually pretty happy about it. 

Soon enough, they’re preparing to land in London. Ava joins the others upfront of the plane, and she has Gary talking her ear off with the schedule of the entire trip, down to the minute; as if she doesn’t already know the entire schedule better than she knows herself. 

The plane lands, and there’s a large SUV waiting for them, along with two police cars. Sara and Behrad are walking in front of Ava, the two of them coming to a stop when they realize that there is already a driver, meaning one of them is going to be shoved in the back of the car. 

“Shotgun,” Behrad leans over and whispers, his comment earns him an elbow to the ribs from the smaller blonde woman.

“Stop it, you sit in the back with Charlie and Gary,” Sara whispers through gritted teeth and glares at the dark-haired man. The second he sees the look on her face he knows she isn’t kidding around, so he nods his head and saunters to the back of the group and sits on the very back seat squished between Charlie and Gary. 

Once everyone is seated in the SUV, they’re driven to the hotel, where they have all of ten minutes to get settled in the room and sort their things out before Ava has to meet with the Prime Minister. Ava quickly changes into a different outfit, one that is much more suitable for meeting up with members of the UK government. They’re then ushered out to the same car and taken to number 10 Downing Street, where there’s a small crowd of tourists waiting at the gates; snapping pictures of the building and the surrounding areas. 

The car comes to a stop just before they reach the building, Sara gets out of the car first and opens the door for Ava, “thank you,” she says softly, with a fond smile on her face. She quickly smooths out her pants and then her blazer, before Zari rushes round to her and fixes her hair. 

“Ready?” Zari questions and the tall blonde nods her head. She steps away from the car and from her team, before saying goodbye and heading towards the famous black door. 

The press are there with their cameras pointed right at her, each of them shouting over one another to try and get her to answer their questions. However, she ignores them but gives the cameras a wave and a small, tight-lipped smile, before the door opens and she steps inside the building. 

The second she steps inside, the door is closed behind her and she is greeted by a young woman. She has jet-black hair, green eyes, and pale skin. There’s a slight glimmer in her eyes when she introduces herself as the Prime Ministers assistant, she follows the small woman through the house and towards the part of the building she’s been to a million times before. It doesn’t stop the nerves that are coursing through her body. 

The room is already half full of cabinet members and other members of the government. The majority of them are old white men, with only three other women there, besides Ava. She stands in the corner of the room slightly awkward, with her hands firmly clasped together behind her back. Until a few more people enter the room, including a woman who she spends the majority of her time at these events. 

“Gideon, hi,” Ava says with a small smile on her face, as the woman walks towards her. 

The two of them get caught up on everything that has changed in their lives since the last time they saw one another. Halfway through the conversation, the Prime Minister turns up and everyone moves to sit down around the large table. 

“Secretary Sharpe,” the PM says with a slight nod towards Ava as he sits down beside her. 

“Prime Minister Hunter,” Ava responds and with that, they get down to business. 

The conversations run freely and the talks of the new global environment initiative happen almost immediately. Ava goes through the initiative in great detail, she probably goes into more detail than is needed, but she is very passionate about the cause and wants to get as many people and countries as she possibly can onboard. It’s not only important to her but for the good of the world. 

Then lunch is served and the conversation about the initiative comes to a halt. Instead, they begin to talk about other issues before it turns into general conversation. 

Luckily for Ava, it is over a lot sooner than she expects it to be, and before she knows it she’s back in the car heading back to the hotel. 

She’s back in her room, going over a few things in preparation for tomorrow’s event at Buckingham Palace. She’s sitting at the desk by the window in the room, the sun is setting outside making the sky a beautiful mixture of pinks, purples, and blues. She tears her attention away from her work just long enough to snap a few pictures of it.

The second she tries to focus again, there is a knock on her door. She lets out a soft sigh before standing up from the desk and looking through the peephole in the door. She sees Gary standing there with a huge, excited grin on his face. Her eyes roll in slight annoyance, but she opens the door anyway. 

“Gary, what do you want?” the words come out harsher than she intends them to and Gary’s smile falters for a moment before it creeps back onto his face. She feels bad for a second but then remembers the amount of work that she still has to do and looks at him with a stoic face and folds her arms over her chest. 

“We are going to do some sightseeing, Charlie said that she knows some good places that we won’t have ever been to before and then to look at some Christmas lights, I thought you might want to come with us,” Gary says excitedly, his excitement quickly disappears when Ava shakes her head. 

“I have too much work to do for tomorrow, but enjoy yourselves,” Ava says before she shuts the door on him, not giving him a chance to even try to convince her because she knows that he will beg her to join them; and she is not in the mood for that right now. She turns on her heel and stalks back over to the desk in the corner of the room. 

Meanwhile, in the hallway outside of Ava’s room, Gary is rushing back to the next room over to tell Zari that she won’t be joining them. Even though the dark-haired woman already knew the answer before Gary even asked her. 

“She doesn’t want to come, but she said that we should still go,” Gary says, looking at the others in the room with hopeful eyes. 

“Let’s get going then shall we?” Charlie claps her hands together before she steps out of the room and into the hallway. The five of them (Charlie, Zari, Behrad, Sara, and Gary) all follow suit and walk down the hallway. But, Sara comes to a halt just outside of Ava’s door. She stands with her back to the door and her hands clasped together in front of her. 

The others realize that she is no longer walking with her and stop walking, Charlie turns around to see her standing by the door. She holds her hands up in a questioning manner and her face is scrunched up into a frown. 

“Oi, boss what are you doin’?” Charlie questions, she steps away from the group and closer to Sara. 

“You guys go ahead, make sure nothing happens to those two, I need to stay here and make sure nothing happens to Ava,” Sara explains and Charlie is about to protest but Sara gives her a look that says there is no room for arguments. Charlie nods her head, they say a quick goodbye and the small group carries on down the hallway and out of the hotel.

Sara is standing there for almost an hour when she accidentally drops her phone from her pocket and it hits Ava’s door on the way down to the ground. Seconds later, the door flies open and Ava finds Sara bending down to pick up her phone. 

“What are you doing? Shouldn’t you be out looking at weird places in London with Christmas lights?” Ava asks, her voice is full of confusion. But, there is also a hint of relief in her voice that it is just Sara at the door, because when she looked through the peephole she couldn’t see anybody and that is never a good sign. 

“I know the hotel has security, but I don’t really trust them. Besides, this is my job and I am in London to do my job not to go sightseeing,” Sara explains and Ava looks a little shocked. 

After reading her file, Ava wasn’t really sure what she should expect from Sara Lance, because there were some pretty questionable things in there. But, so far she is going above and beyond every expectation that Ava had of her. 

“Shouldn’t the rest of your team be here then?”

“Nah, I’ve got this don’t worry, besides I think Gary might need the security more than you, god knows what he will get himself into, you seem pretty capable of taking care of yourself,” Sara says with a slight smirk twitching at the corners of her mouth. 

Ava ducks her head slightly, to try and hide the light blush that is creeping up her neck. She tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear before she says, “you can come in if you would like, it seems boring just standing in the hallway, although I can’t guarantee that it will be much more entertaining in here because I’m going over some paperwork.”

Sara just shrugs her shoulders and follows the taller woman into the room. She locks the door behind them, just to be safe, before walking over to the couch in the middle of the room and flops down onto it. She sits there for a few moments, just staring around the room taking it all in. it’s much fancier than her room is. She thinks that it may even be bigger than her apartment back home, in DC. 

Her eyes then land on Ava. 

She’s sitting at the desk holding a bunch of papers in her hands. She flips through them, scribbling her signature at the bottom of a few of them, before placing them onto a pile of their own and picking up some more papers. This time she reads through it and her face scrunches up slightly and her tongue pokes out from between her lips, indicating that she is in full focus mode. 

Sara finds it quite cute that she sticks her tongue out to concentrate. 

Sara realizes it’s the first time that Ava’s hair isn’t scraped back into a tight bun. Instead, it is falling freely down her back. Sara thinks she has the most beautiful hair that she has ever seen, it’s almost magical. Like a mermaids hair so full of life and beauty. It makes her slightly upset that she doesn’t have her hair like this every day, instead, it is all tucked away in a slicked-back bun, never to be seen in all of its glory.

And don’t even get her started on Ava’s side profile. Her jawline is perfect, as are her cheekbones, even without a trace of makeup they glow under the yellow-ish light of the hotel room. She feels privileged to be able to see her in this light, while she doesn’t wear much makeup as it is, seeing her bare-faced and wearing comfortable clothes makes her even more beautiful in Sara’s eyes. 

She doesn’t realize that she is still staring at the woman until Ava clears her throat and is looking at her expectantly. 

“Huh?” Sara says clearing her own throat, slightly embarrassed that she has been caught staring at her boss, basically drooling over her. Then her eyes go wide as she remembers that Ava is literally her boss and she definitely should not be thinking about her like this. She shakes her head slightly as if to shake the thoughts from her head. 

“I said, there are some drinks in the mini-fridge over there if you would like one,” Ava points towards the small kitchen area in the room, Sara’s eyes follow where she is pointing, and nods her head. 

She scrambles off of the couch and almost runs towards the mini-fridge, just to be able to get away from the very awkward situation. She grabs a bottle of water and practically downs the entire bottle, only leaving a tiny bit. 

She takes the bottle back over to the couch with her and settles back in her original seat, not even looking in Ava’s direction this time. Instead, she pulls out a Nintendo switch from her pocket, it’s Behrad’s but he left it for her to use while they were out and she thought she would be alone in the hallway. 

It takes a little while for her to get a hang of the game, but when she does, she’s actually pretty good at it. 

The room is silent, apart from the flip of the papers every now and then, there’s also the quiet sounds of Sara furiously pushing the buttons on the switch. After a while, it begins to get on Ava’s nerves, because she appears to be losing whatever game she is playing and the sound of the buttons being pushed gets louder and Sara starts to make frustrated noises. 

“Do you mind?” Ava all but snaps, the annoyance clear in her tone.

Sara looks over at Ava with an apologetic look on her face, “sorry,” she says and stops hitting the buttons so hard and keeps the frustrated noises to herself. Ava just nods her head and turns back to her work. 

They carry on as they are for another thirty minutes or so before Ava stops what she is doing, and places the papers onto another pile at the other end of the desk. She’s no longer able to concentrate with Sara in the room. She spins on the chair to look over at the smaller blonde woman, who lifts her head from the console in her hands and glances at Ava. 

“I’m ordering room service, do you want anything?” Ava says suddenly, and the smaller blonde tilts her head to the side slightly as if it would help her come to a decision. 

“Sure, is there a menu?” she asks and Ava nods her head, she strides across the room and towards the bedside table. She grabs the menu, which is bound in brown faux leather with the hotel’s logo engraved onto the front of it in swirly golden writing. Sara takes it from her with a grateful smile and reads through the meals. 

They both finally decide on what they each want to order, and it doesn’t take very long at all for the room service to arrive. A tall, skinny, man with large circlular glasses brings it into the room and places the food onto the table for them; along with the drinks, and left the deserts off to the side for when they had finished their meals. 

The two of them sit down to eat and it’s all very awkward. Neither of them really know what to say to one another. 

“So, you’re meeting with the Queen tomorrow, that’s exciting,” Sara says in an attempt to make a conversation.

Ava swallows the food and nods her head, her hand comes up to cover her mouth as she says, “oh, uh, yeah. I’ve been to an event like this before, I doubt I will even get to see the Queen there are usually too many people there and she doesn’t really socialize very much, it’s more about talking to as many people as possible and maintaining good relationships with the ambassadors from other countries.”

“It sounds more like a speed dating event,” Sara jokes.

It earns a soft chuckle from Ava, she looks down at the food on her plate and then back up at Sara with a soft smile on her face, she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and says, “yeah, though I think a speed dating event might be easier to deal with because there is probably more than enough alcohol at those things.”

“Wait you don’t get to drink at this thing?” Sara questions, the whole thing sounding a little too boring for her, it makes her very glad that she isn’t in Ava’s position. There is no way she could spend an entire evening sucking up to people just to try to get them to do a good thing, like join the initiative. 

“They hand out champagne, but I prefer not to drink at them because I need to be on top form,” Ava explains, and Sara’s head nods in understanding. 

“You have better self-discipline than me.”

“I’ve never really been a big drinker, I don’t have the time for it, besides I never know if there is going to be some emergency that I have to deal with,” Ava says and Sara’s eyes go wide, not because Ava doesn’t drink but because of the fact that it sounds as though she never has time for herself. 

She is always in work mode and doesn’t allow herself to relax even a little bit. Her job is very important and she is right there could be an emergency at any second that needs her full attention, that cannot be risked by her being drunk. Despite the importance of her job, everybody needs a little time to relax and turn off from the world for a little while. So Sara decides at that moment, to make it her mission to help Ava relax just a little over this trip. She has to be very careful in making sure that she doesn’t overstep because Ava is her boss after all. 

They enjoy the rest of their meals with a little less awkwardness between them once they manage to fall into a comfortable conversation. However, once they finish eating Ava starts to yawn, and her eyes struggle to stay open. Sara takes that as a hint to leave and let Ava sleep because god knows she needs it. They say goodnight before Sara leaves the room and Ava changes into her pajamas and climbs into bed.

The next morning Ava is awake and in the hotel’s gym before the sun is even up. She walks into the room expecting it to be empty because it is so early in the morning, but to her surprise, there is somebody in there. A small blonde woman with her back towards her as she runs on the running machine. She has headphones resting on top of her head, black yoga pants, and a plain black sports bra, that shows off every single muscle on her upper body. Ava stares for a moment, her back and arm muscles flex every time she moves and the taller woman can’t bring herself to look away. 

She only looks away when the small voice in her head tells her that she is being a creep by staring at a random stranger in the gym. Ava goes over to the row of running machines that are facing a wall of large floor to ceiling windows. She steps onto a machine that is a few spaces away from the blonde woman and starts it up. It goes slow at first, building up from a speed-walk to a jog, her ponytail swinging from side to side with each step she takes. 

It isn’t until she glances out of the window that she realizes the woman on the other machine is Sara. She notices her reflection in the window. She contemplates whether she should say hello or not, in the end, she decides on the latter because from her own experience there is nothing worse than somebody trying to make conversation with you when you’re working out. 

Ava focuses on her own workout but suddenly feels a little self-conscious because Sara looks like a professional athlete. She notices the other woman’s abs in the window and they look rock hard, she also has the v-muscles that disappear under her yoga pants. Ava catches herself staring at the woman again, but this time she doesn’t turn away quick enough because Sara turns to look at her with a cocky smirk on her face. 

“See something you like huh?” 

“I- uh, no, I mean yes, I mean, I gotta go get ready for the event,” Ava fumbles over her words before grabbing her water bottle and fleeing the scene. It’s only when she gets back to her hotel room that she feels as though she can breathe again. The event doesn’t start for another six hours and now she can’t even work out to pass the time because she made a fool of herself. 

She sits on the couch in the middle of the room with her head in her hands, trying her very best to ignore the complete embarrassment that she is feeling. It doesn’t work, in fact, it gets worse when she realizes that she is going to have to face Sara again, she wishes that the floor would swallow her whole; just so she doesn’t have to face the smaller woman again. 

However, the time passes a lot quicker than Ava would have liked it to, and before she knows it Zari is snapping a few pictures of her in her outfit for the event. She’s wearing a maroon-colored pantsuit, with a crisp white button-up shirt, and black heels. The heels are a lot higher than she is usually comfortable with, but it’s an important event with very important people and she needs to impress them. 

“This outfit is going to get so many likes,” Zari jokes as she uploads the pictures to Instagram, along with some other pictures from the London trip. Ava just rolls her eyes in response, social media isn’t really her thing, so she is glad to have Zari to deal with that stuff for her. The dark-haired woman turns the phone to Ava to show her the post before it is uploaded, Ava just nods her head and gives Zari the okay to upload it. 

They’re just about to leave the room when there’s a soft knock on the door. Ava pulls it open without looking to see who it is and is met with Sara standing there. She’s wearing a black pantsuit, with a black sweater under the jacket. But, she is wearing sensible black shoes, so this makes Ava even taller than usual compared to Sara. 

The second Sara lays her eyes on Ava, her mouth drops open a little and her eyes widen at the sight of her. She shakes her head slightly to bring herself back to reality and closes her mouth before saying, “the car is waiting downstairs if you’re ready.”

When they arrive at Buckingham Palace there are people everywhere. People are taking pictures of the palace and posing in front of it, there are kids running around with their parents desperately trying to control them, but are ultimately failing. There’s also a group of paparazzi standing by the main gate waiting to snap pictures of Ava. 

Once they’re inside the palace, they’re escorted to the main room where the event is taking place. The room is full of important people from all over the world, although she can’t see any members of the royal family, she just assumes they will arrive after everyone else is there. 

She and her team go further into the room and Ava starts mingling with the other people, and out of the corner of her eye, she notices Behrad and Charlie shoving one another. She glances at them with a hard glare but neither of them notices, they’re too wrapped up in whatever they’re doing. Luckily for them, Sara sees the anger in her eyes and tells them to cut it out. 

It isn’t too long after that, that a member of the royal staff enters the room and gets everyone’s attention before saying, “please welcome Her Majesty The Queen, and His Royal Highness Prince Phillip.”

The room fell silent as they walk in and are introduced to the people at the opposite end of the room to Ava. However, people quickly fall back into their conversations and the room doesn’t feel as tense as it had when they first entered. 

The rest of the night is dull, she is stuck speaking with the same few people because they’re the ones who are going to benefit her the most when it comes to other countries joining the initiative. 

She doesn’t even get to speak with the Queen, which she is slightly grateful for because every now and then she notices Behrad and Charlie joking around, keeping her on edge all evening. They were told exactly how they were expected to act at this event, and the two of them completely ignored all of that. 

To say Ava is angry with them doesn’t do her emotions justice. She is furious. They know just how important this event is, not only for Ava but also for the future of their world. 

She is relieved when the event is over, she practically marches out of the building and to the car. Staying silent for the whole ride back to their hotel. Gary tries to make conversation with her but quickly realizes that she is not in the mood when her only responses are soft hums. 

They get back to the hotel and everyone goes to their rooms. But before Sara can carry on down the hallway to her own room, Ava pulls her aside. 

“What the hell was that? Do you know how embarrassing that was? That event was one of the most important ones on this trip and your merry band of idiots could have cost me this initiative!” Ava snaps at the smaller blonde woman. 

She looks equally as mad, and Ava can’t tell whether it’s because she is almost yelling at her or whether her anger is towards the other members of her security team. However, at this moment she doesn’t really care, she’s too angry herself. 

Sara opens and closes her mouth a few times, clearly unsure what to say, she settles on saying, “I’m sorry, it won’t happen again.”

“You’re right it won’t, you are the head of the team, they’re your responsibility, do your damn job and keep them under control,” Ava says before turning on her heel and heading towards her room. 

Sara chews on her bottom lip to avoid making a comment that would most likely get her fired. Instead, she turned away from Ava and headed towards her own room, knocking on Charlie’s door and then Behrad’s in the process. She takes the two of them into the room and they get comfortable on the couch while Sara paces up and down in front of them.

“I selected you two for this team because I thought that you would be the best ones for this job, clearly I was wrong. You aren’t in college anymore, you need to grow up and act professional, especially at events like tonight’s because we are going to be attending a lot more of those in the coming weeks, get it together. You almost cost us all of our jobs tonight, that is not going to happen again, am I clear?” Sara snaps at them. 

They look a little shocked that she is kind of taking Ava’s side and at the fact that she is berating them. They’re both sitting with their hands in their laps and pouts on their faces, like little kids when they get in trouble. 

She doesn’t even give them the chance to apologize or defend themselves before she tells them to get out. Once they leave she pours herself a glass of whiskey and ends up watching shitty tv well into the night.


	3. three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Europe trip is in full swing but Sara and Ava get trapped together, ensue more bonding between them.

The few days following the London incident, are tense between Ava and her security team. Even though Behrad and Charlie have apologized to both Ava and Sara and assured them that it wouldn’t happen again, Ava is still a little on edge the entire time that they’re in Paris. 

Luckily, they stick to their words and are on their best behavior. No doubt because Sara had threatened them if they weren’t. They’re on the last day of the entire European trip, every event felt the same with Ava having to convince a bunch of rich, white, straight, men to show some compassion and actually help to save the environment. It took a lot of convincing for the majority of them to join the initiative, but she was able to do it. 

And now they’re on their way back to their hotel rooms after attending the last event of the trip. 

“Oh, my phone! I left it in the car,” Ava says before quickly turning on her heel and hurrying back outside the hotel. Luckily the car is still there and she is able to quickly grab it from the back seat where she had left it. 

She says goodbye to the driver for the second time and heads back into the hotel, crashing into somebody in the process. Both of them apologize profusely and that’s when Ava realizes that said person is Sara. She looks down at her with a skeptical look before saying, “you didn’t have to follow me out here you know, I don’t think anything will happen if I step outside for less than a minute to grab my phone.”

“Better safe than sorry,” Sara shrugs her shoulders as they both head back inside. Ava just rolls her eyes at the comment and they wait for the elevator in silence until Sara says, “Zari told me to tell you that she said goodnight, she was going to wait for you but her boyfriend called and I assume they’re going to be talking for a while after what I heard last time.”

Sara shudders at the thought of Zari calling her boyfriend. The last time he called they were in Germany, a couple of days ago, and Sara heard everything. She heard things that she wishes that she could erase from her memory. 

Ava reacts in the same way. She has fallen victim to Zari and Constantine’s phone calls many times before. 

“I feel sorry for whoever is in the rooms next to her,” Ava chuckles, and seconds later both of their eyes go wide and their heads snap towards one another when they realize that Behrad is in one of the rooms beside Zari.

“Eh, he will probably be wearing his headphones playing video games until the early hours of the morning, he should be fine,” Sara says and Ava just nods her head, a little relieved that he wouldn’t have to go through hearing his sister have phone sex. Although, Ava likes to think that, for his sake, Zari will keep the noise to a minimum. 

Their minds are torn away from Behrad possibly being traumatized by his sister when the elevator dings and the doors slide open. Lucky for them it is empty and there is nobody else waiting for it. 

They step in and Sara pushes the button to take them to their floor and the doors slide shut. 

Ava is standing in the corner gripping onto the rail that goes around the elevator wall. She’s gripping onto it so hard that her knuckles are turning white. Sara looks at her with slight concern on her face and she is about to ask her if she is okay, when the elevator judders and comes to a halt. The lights flicker a few times before turning out fully and the backup emergency lights turn on, making the elevator a bright green color. 

Sara starts pressing the button for their floor thinking that it will help.

It doesn’t. 

They’re stuck.

She pushes the emergency button a few more times than necessary in hopes that it actually works and somebody will come and save them. In the meantime, she looks around the elevator, in search of a way out if worse comes to worst. 

However, her attention is very quickly drawn away from searching for a way out when she hears Ava softly saying, ‘no’ over and over. She turns to see Ava gripping onto the railing for dear life, with both hands now. Her forehead is pressed against the cold metal of the elevator walls and her breathing is getting heavier and quicker. Almost as if she is gasping for air.

That’s when it hits Sara that she is having a panic attack. 

She slowly approaches Ava, careful not to startle her. She stands beside her and tries talking to her, in hopes that it will help. 

“Hey, hey, it’s okay, we are going to get out of here. I’m sure they have people on their way to help already.” 

It doesn’t seem to do anything, Ava is still breathing heavily and gripping onto the railing, but she tries again, taking a different approach this time. 

“Ava, you’re okay, it’s okay, I need you to take some deep breaths, follow me,” Sara says before taking a few deep breaths in an attempt to get Ava to copy her but that doesn’t work either. Ava is too wrapped up in her head to be able to focus on anything around her. But, then Sara has a lightbulb moment, and cautiously reaches out for Ava’s hand, she takes it as a good sign when the taller woman doesn’t flinch away or shrug her off. She pulls Ava’s hand up to her chest and places it palm down so that she can feel Sara’s breathing instead of having to rely on hearing it. 

“Copy my breathing Ava,” Sara says softly, continuing with her deep breaths and it seems to work because Ava’s breaths aren’t as quick and heavy anymore. Instead, they’re more controlled and closer to how Sara is breathing. 

Soon enough Ava is able to breathe normally again and she lets go of her death grip on the railing before sliding down the wall and sitting in the corner of the elevator with her hand covering her face. Sara joins her by sitting on the floor, but at the opposite end of the elevator to give her some space. 

They sit in silence for a few moments while Ava continues to take deep breaths and tries her very best to keep herself calm. 

Soon enough the deep breaths stop and the silence is replaced with Ava’s raspy voice as she says, “I’m sorry, this is so unprofessional and quite frankly embarrassing.”

Sara is taken aback by her words for a minute. A little unsure of how she should respond to that comment, she has never heard anybody describe a panic attack as being ‘unprofessional’ before. 

She manages to think of something to say when she realizes that she is just staring at the other woman with a frown on her face, “you don’t ever have to apologize to me for something like that, it isn’t unprofessional or embarrassing it is a natural human reaction to something like this, especially if you don’t like small spaces.”

Ava’s head shoots up at the last part, mostly from confusion because she never told Sara about her fear of small spaces. 

“I saw you gripping onto the rail, it’s understandable that you don’t like them, you are basically a giant,” Sara teases and Ava just rolls her eyes at the comment, but there is still a smile on her face. 

“You’re just short,” Ava retorts, the soft smile turns into a smirk and that’s when Sara realizes that she needs to keep Ava talking in order to keep her calm. 

“I am not short!” Sara feigns offense, her face scrunching up slightly as she speaks. “You sound like my sister.”

“I didn’t know you have a sister,” Ava thinks out loud, and Sara takes the opportunity to tell her a little bit about her sister; both in an attempt to keep Ava’s mind off of the fact that they’re trapped in a metal box and because her sister is her hero and she will talk about her at any given opportunity. 

“Yeah, her name is Laurel, she’s a lawyer, always trying to save the world one way or another,” a proud smile creeps onto Sara’s lips as she talks about her sister. 

“She sounds amazing, are the two of you close?” Ava asks, her voice is filled with curiosity. 

“We are, we talk on the phone at least once a week. I lived with her for a while, because she was injured pretty bad over a case she was working on, her husband has to work overseas quite often for his company and they have a two-year-old, so I moved in just to help her take care of him whenever Tommy was away for work. She was actually the one who convinced me to take this job,” Sara said pausing for a moment and glancing over at Ava to make sure that she is okay.

“Were you not going to take it?” Ava’s head tilts to the side slightly, in confusion. Resembling a golden retriever puppy, Sara thinks with an amused smile on her face, mostly because of the fact that that is the last thing that she would imagine Ava to be associated with. 

“Oh- uh- no I wasn’t,” she admits hesitantly, glancing down at her hands that are resting in her lap before looking back at the women opposite her. “I was going to turn it down because my relationship with Laurel hasn’t always been good. We were in our early twenties and I did something that was unforgivable, we didn’t speak for almost two years. Not until my dad invited us to dinner and forced us to talk it all through. And when I was living with her, our relationship was so good, and I thought that if I moved away it might go back to how it was before and I didn’t want that to happen because I couldn’t lose her or my nephew, but she convinced me that she wouldn’t let that happen and eventually I took the job.”

Ava has so many questions about it all, but she decides to keep them to herself because she and Sara are definitely not close enough for her to be prying into her private life. Especially with something as precious as her relationship with her sister. But, she’s curious to learn more about the blonde woman in front of her. From the short amount of time they have already spent together, Ava has been left aching to get to know more about her.

“I am grateful that she did, I don’t know what I would be doing right now if you weren’t here with me,” Ava says, earning a cocky smile from the shorter woman. 

“You would probably be trapped in here with some grumpy old man who wouldn’t even look you in the eye,” Sara states and Ava nods her head in agreement, briefly thinking back to her old security team. The person in Sara’s position was in fact an older man, who she barely even spoke to, he was much more interested in just getting her from one place to another in one piece. 

Sara does that too. In fact, she probably takes Ava’s safety a lot more seriously than her previous guards. Her eyes are constantly scanning whatever place they’re in, trying to spot threats that aren’t even there; but she just likes to make sure. Even when she is preoccupied with other things, her eyes are still glancing around the room making sure that Ava is safe. 

If it were anybody else it would probably get on Ava’s nerves. Because nothing could seriously happen within the two seconds of her scanning the area before she checks again. But, Ava doesn’t let it annoy her because she is just doing her job and she would rather have a security guard who is overly cautious than not cautious enough. 

“So, what about you? Do you have any siblings?” Sara questions after a few moments of silence between them. 

“I have a brother, Nate. He’s a History Professor at Star City University,” Ava says with a soft smile on her face at the thought of her brother. But the conversation also reminds her that she should probably call him because it’s been too long for her liking since the last time they spoke. Their schedules always seem to keep them away from each other and it’s difficult to keep up sometimes.

“My mom used to work there, but she moved to Central City University when she and my dad divorced,” Sara says with a shrug before adding, “maybe they know one another, when did he start working there?” 

Ava’s face scrunches up slightly as she tries to remember when he started working there. It should be engraved onto her brain because she had never seen Nate so happy to be able to prove Hank wrong since he graduated with his degree in History. “Around five years ago.”

“Oh, they definitely don’t know one another, she moved there like ten years ago.”

Ava asks a few more questions about Sara’s mom, about her job, and whether they are close or not. To which Sara tells her that they aren’t as close as they used to be but they try to call each other a couple of times a month to keep updated on their lives. Soon enough they fall onto the topic of her dad. 

“He was Captain of the Star City police department for a while but some things happened, he took some time out, and now he is the Mayor of Star City,” Sara explains and even with the very minimal lighting in the elevator, Sara can see Ava’s eyebrows raise in something that looks a lot like surprise. 

“Your whole family sounds pretty cool,” Ava says softly. 

“They are pretty awesome,” Sara says with a small smile working its way onto her face as she thinks about her family. While also making a mental note to call Laurel once they get out of here because despite working for Ava for over a month, it all seems very surreal to just be able to talk to her like a regular human being. And not as the Secretary of State. 

“What about you, what’s your family like?” Sara questions after a short silence between them. The second the question leaves her lips she notices Ava tense up before looking down at her hands in her lap and begins to pick at the skin around her nails. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to overstep I just-”

“You didn’t, it’s okay,” Ava says even though they both know it’s a lie, she takes a moment to gather herself. The question caught her a little off guard. Nobody ever asks about her family so she hasn’t had to think about them for a long, long time. And yet here Sara is, innocently asking her questions, both trying to learn more about her and keep her mind occupied. But, this might not be the best way to go about that. 

Still, Ava takes a minute and then answers Sara’s question. It’s only fair, the smaller blonde woman has answered every single question Ava has had about her and her family. 

“My parents are the best, my mom is so kind and she will literally drop everything to help me if I’m not feeling good. She is the best and my dad, he works way too much and I guess that’s where my work ethic comes from, when we were younger sometimes he worked so much we wouldn’t see him for like a week, but he tried his best and that’s a lot more than I can say for my biological parents. I honestly don’t know where I would be today if they didn’t adopt me,” Ava says, and Sara’s eyes go wide with shock at the last part. 

“I had no idea you’re adopted,” Sara thinks out loud, and before she can say anything else Ava is talking again. 

“Yeah, they, uh- they kicked me out when I was 16, I had just turned 16. They found out that I was gay, I was outed at school and obviously, people talk so my parents found out and I came home from school one day my bags were packed and there was a note, a freaking note, they couldn’t even say it to my face. I don’t think this will come as a surprise, but, I had no friends in high school, I was very focused on my studies, that and I lost the only two friends I had when I was outed, they said they couldn’t be seen with a lesbian and they were afraid that I would try to do something to them at sleepovers or whatever.” 

“God, I’m sorry you had to go through that, that sucks, I’m glad you have people who love you,” Sara says shuffling closer to Ava in case it was too much for her to talk about and she needs comforting. But the taller woman just shrugs her shoulders and brushes it off. 

“It’s okay, I’ve made peace with it, it took a lot of therapy but my family are the best, they helped me so much and I don’t think I would be here today without them and their unconditional love,” Ava says, with a smile on her face that makes her eyes shine. 

At that moment, Sara can’t do anything other than stare at the other woman in complete and utter awe. It is common knowledge that Ava is a very strong, independent, powerful woman, but it had never occurred to Sara how much she has had overcome in her life. It only makes her admire her more.   
She knew that Ava has struggled a little throughout her life because being a woman in American politics is taxing enough. But being a woman in politics after overcoming all that she has, as early on in her life as she did, Sara is struggling to find the words to describe how amazed she is by the woman sitting by her side. 

Before she even has the chance to say anything else the elevator doors are being slid open slowly by gloved hands and some small machine that neither woman had ever seen before. The slight gap in the doors reveals that they are stuck between floors, with only a tiny gap at the top of the doors that opens out onto a random floor of the hotel. Soon enough the doors were open, just enough for a firewoman to poke her head through.

“Hi, we are working on getting everything up and running again and you should be out of here soon enough, thank you for your patience,” the woman says with a thick french accent. Ava just gulps slightly and nods her head in response. 

Sara can see the panic rising in her once again and has no clue what to do about it because there is no way Ava is going to want to sit and carry on the conversation when there are so many people working to free them from the small metal box. 

“Okay, we are going to get you out of here, grab onto us and we will pull you out of there, one at a time,” the firefighter says as she pokes her head through the gap once again. 

Ava steps back a little as if to let Sara be rescued first; despite her being very afraid of the elevator. Sara shakes her head and nudges her forward. 

“Go on, I’ll be right behind you,” Sara says and Ava still looks a little unsure. Kind of like she doesn’t want to leave Sara. But, she goes anyway. She grabs onto the firefighters and they pull her out of the elevator and to the safety of the hotel floor. 

Relief washes over Ava’s face, it feels good to be able to breathe in air that hasn’t circulated a tiny space. She takes a few deep breaths, to calm herself down and to just be able to feel as though she can actually breathe again. 

Paramedics are by her side checking her over, even though she claims to be fine. They give her some water and give her a quick check over, just to rule out any injury. Once that is over, true to her word, Sara is right beside her, also getting checked over by the paramedics. Luckily she is fine too and they leave the scene each with a bottle of water in hand and exhausted expressions on their faces. 

“I guess we will be taking the stairs from now on,” Sara chuckles as they walk through the hallways and to the stairwell. 

Their rooms are closer to the top floor, so they have a long way to go and many, many stairs to climb. Luckily for the two of them, they work out often so they don’t seem to struggle as they walk up the multiple flights of stairs. 

“Oh definitely, that was the worst thing I have experienced and I have had to deal with a lot of awful world leaders,” Ava jokes. 

They finally make it to their floor and as they’re walking down the hallway they hear Charlie and Behrad shouting, probably at a game. The two women share a look and just shrug it off because at least they can’t hear Zari on the phone to Constantine. They carry on past their rooms and finally make it to the end of the hallway where Ava’s room is located. 

“You missed your room,” Ava says with a confused frown on her face. 

“I know, I need to make sure you get in okay, especially after what just happened,” an amused smile works its way onto Sara’s face as she watches the confused expression fall from Ava’s face and the corners of her mouth twitch slightly, into a small smile. 

“Well, I’m here, safe and sound. I have my phone and my key, goodnight Miss Lance,” Ava says and turns to open her door, but the smaller woman doesn’t budge. She’s still standing there just staring at Ava with a look in her eyes, but Ava can’t tell what it is. Her smile has faltered slightly from an amused smile to one that seems to make Ava feel all warm inside. She is looking at her with such intensity that Ava has no idea what to do, with herself, with her hands. She glances between the floor and Sara before finally asking, “are you okay?”

It seems to pull Sara out of her trance, her smile still stays the same though, as does the look in her eyes. She nods her head but doesn’t answer the question verbally, instead, she says, “you’re a badass you know, there is nobody in this country more deserving of becoming president than you.” 

It takes Ava by surprise, her head shoots up from looking at the floor and to Sara, who is standing there with a proud smile on her face. 

“I- thank you,” Ava whispers, still a little stunned by the sudden declaration. 

“Good night Madam Secretary,” Sara says along with a mock salute that earns a small chuckle from the taller woman. 

“Good night miss Lance,” Ava responds before they retreat to their respective rooms and turn in for the night.


	4. four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Europe trip is over and Zari catches up with Ava before some big news gets leaked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, I hope that you enjoy this chapter it was fun to write! I also wanted to let you know that there may not be a chapter next Sunday as I am swamped with University work, but I will try my best to get it out for you guys. Have a great day/night!!:))

The trip across Europe is finally over and they’re on the plane, heading home. The entire team is dotted around various parts of the plane, Ava is in the back, finishing some work. Sara is sitting up front with Behrad and Charlie watching a movie. Gary is also upfront, playing some game on his phone. Mick is sleeping upfront, snoring like a chainsaw and Zari is kind of floating around the plane, jumping from one place to another trying to keep herself entertained. 

That’s how she finds herself wandering into the office area towards the back of the plane. She finds Ava sitting at the desk with her head in her hands. 

“Knock, knock,” Zari says as she walks into the ‘room’ and sits down opposite the blonde. 

“You know you’re supposed to actually knock and then wait to be let in, right?” Ava says, her head never lifting from its spot in her hands. 

The dark-haired woman just shrugs and says, “eh, I figured you would just be doing work, instead of whatever this is, are you okay?” Zari waves her hand in Ava’s direction and a concerned look worms its way onto her face when Ava still doesn’t lift her head from her hands. 

“I’m fine, great even. We got everyone we needed to join the initiative and now I can focus on finalizing other important things before resigning and focusing on the campaign,” Ava says and finally lifts her head to look at her friend. 

“I heard you got stuck in an elevator last night,” Zari states, the concern still marring her features. 

She knows all about Ava’s disdain towards small spaces and elevators in particular. She has seen it first hand. 

Ava just looks at her with narrowed eyes and a curious look on her face, “how do you know about that?”

“I have my ways,” Zari says, the concern falling from her face and is replaced by a cocky smile. Because of course, she does. She’s Zari Tarazi. There isn’t anything that she isn’t able to find out about, at first it made Ava a little scared how fast Zari found out about things, but she’s known her for so long; now she just expects her to know everything about everyone. 

“Of course you do,” Ava playfully rolls her eyes at her friend.

“Seriously though, are you okay? Why didn’t you call me?”

“There was nothing you could have done, besides you were on the phone to Constantine and that is not something that I want to interrupt,” Ava chuckles, earning a light slap on her arm from the dark-haired woman. “That and I was too busy having a panic attack, I don’t know what I would have done if Sara wasn’t there with me.”

Zari’s eyebrows shoot up almost hitting her hairline, she had been so focused on getting to her room as fast as possible she hadn’t even noticed that Sara and Ava weren’t in the elevator with them. 

When she gets over the surprise that Sara was with Ava, a smirk takes over her face and causes Ava’s cheeks to turn a slight pink color. She doesn’t even know why she’s blushing, Zari hasn’t even said anything yet and she knows that nothing happened between them. Nothing will ever happen between them. She doesn’t even feel about Sara in that way, but Zari is just looking at her with a teasing smirk and she knows exactly what she is going to say. 

“How long were you trapped in there together?” Zari says, taking Ava slightly by surprise. She expected her to tease her about the two of them, but instead, she doesn’t even mention it. Well, at least not verbally. She can still see the teasing glint in Zari’s eyes. 

“I have no idea, one minute the thing stopped moving and the lights went out, then I had a panic attack and Sara helped me out of it and we just talked until the fire people came and got us out,” Ava explains and the mischievous smirk returns to Zari’s face. 

“You talked? What like the entire time?” 

“Yes, we talked; she is a very easy person to talk to,” Ava shrugs her shoulders. 

“What did you talk about?”

“She told me that she almost didn’t take the job, but her sister was the one to convince her to take it and then we talked about her family and then she asked me about my family,” Ava says and Zari pauses, she knows family is kind of a sore spot for Ava. Especially around people, she doesn’t really know all that well. It took her a long time to open up to Zari about it all. 

“Your family? What did you tell her?” Zari questions slowly, trying to understand what her friend told Sara. Usually, when Ava is asked about her family she avoids the topic like the plague and tries her very best to talk about something else. Because, as much as she loves her family, it almost always leads to her having to talk about her biological parents, and that is still very much a sore subject for her. Or so Zari thought. 

“I told her about Pam and Randy and what they did, and then we talked about my parents and a little bit about Nate because he works at the same university where Sara’s mom used to work,” Ava explains and Zari tries her very best to hide her surprise at the fact that Ava just straight up told Sara about her biological parents. She didn’t expect that from Ava at all, she likes to keep her private life and work-life very separate; hence why it took such a long time for Zari to break her down and finally accept her as more than a work associate. 

And yet here she was just telling Sara about one of, if not, the hardest part of her life; after knowing her for just over a month. 

“What is that face for?” Ava asks, starting to feel a little defensive because while Zari isn’t outright judging her for telling Sara all of that stuff, she was looking at her with slightly narrowed eyes and pursed lips. 

“I’m not making a face,” Zari bit back.

“Yes, you are,” Ava snaps but her face softens and she gives Zari an apologetic look when Zari’s face falls slightly, “we were in an uncomfortable situation, I don’t think she knew that I knew she was just trying to keep me talking so that I wouldn’t think about being trapped in an elevator, but I knew and I wanted to humor her. But, by doing it she helped me a lot, I don’t think I have felt comfortable enough with somebody in a long time to tell them about all of my family stuff.”

Zari is about to come back at her with a witty comment, but she bites her tongue because Ava doesn’t have all that many people in her life to talk to like that. Ava is a very reserved person and she doesn’t just go around telling random people about one of the hardest parts of her life, so Ava must trust Sara. 

She also knows that it’s important for Ava to be able to trust Sara enough with things like that because with her old team there wasn’t all that much trust there. Simply because they didn’t care enough to get to know her, to them it was just a job and they were there for the money and the money only. In return, Ava felt like she needed to be on the lookout 24/7 when it should be her security team. Which is why they are no longer working for her. 

Luckily, Sara is very passionate about her job. She does everything that she can to keep Ava out of danger. She is always on high alert, even when they’re in a situation where no harm could possibly come to her. 

The rest of her team are pretty good too, even if they can be a little immature at times. They’re still exceptional at their jobs of keeping her safe. 

“I need to get back to work,” Ava says when Zari doesn’t say anything in response to what she has just said. 

“Right, I’ll leave you to it,” Zari says before standing up from her chair and leaving the little office area, and heading to the front of the plane. 

As soon as Zari leaves, Ava turns her attention back to the work in front of her with a heavy sigh.

It isn’t long before they’re preparing to touch down in DC. By the time they do land they’re surrounded by the press, Ava glances over at Zari with a mixture of confusion and concern on her face. 

“I’m on it,” Zari says before pulling her phone out and seeing a bunch of notifications pops onto the screen when she turns airplane mode off. “Oh no.”

“Oh no? What do you mean oh no?” Ava shoots up from her seat and strides over to Zari, with worry in her eyes, because ‘oh no’ could mean a million different things and Ava’s mind is already racing through the worst possible things. 

“It got out,” Zari says, still reading something on her phone, not really giving Ava’s panic much mind. 

“What got out?” Ava questions, in hopes that she will get a clear answer from her friend, instead, she is still too busy scrolling through her phone. “Zari! What is going on?” Ava snaps, the frustration clear in her voice, at the lack of response from Zari. 

The woman’s head shoots up at her voice and everyone on the plane is looking in their direction. 

“It somehow got out that you’re planning to run for President, I know this isn’t how you wanted to announce it, but we can have the speech ready and a press conference ready by this evening,” Zari says and Ava just nods her head, knowing that Zari will have it all under control. 

Ava isn’t mad that it got out, it was bound to happen. She has been asked about whether or not she would consider running, more times than she can count on two hands. 

She is more concerned about the fact that their schedule has to be pushed forward by at least a few weeks. The original plan was to finalize all that she needed to as Secretary of State, announce her resignation, and then announce that she was running. Right in that order. But, now it's all skewed. 

Now all she can think about how much more work she has to do in such a short amount of time. But, she tries not to focus on that right now, because they have to depart the plane and go back to the office to get working on the speech. Mick is the first off of the plane so that he has more time to work on it. 

“Are you ready Madame Secretary?” Sara asks with her hands behind her back and her hair scraped back into a tight ponytail, ready to tackle the mob of press waiting for Ava. 

“Let’s go,” Ava says as she grabs her bag and lets Sara lead her off of the plane, Charlie and Behrad very close behind her. The rest of her team follows after them, knowing that the press will be too busy trying to get a statement from Ava, even though they have to know that she is never going to speak to them. 

They step off of the plane and just as expected they surround Ava like a swarm of bees around a honeycomb. Sara is now on her left side, Behrad on her right, and Charlie behind her, as they attempt to bypass the press and make it to the car safely. 

Her name is being called from a million different directions, cameras and microphones are being shoved in her face. Her security team does their absolute best to fend them off. But, one man who doesn’t even seem to have a microphone or anything, just an iPhone in his hand. His free hand flies forward in an attempt to get Ava to stop walking and it lands on her breast, and he doesn’t move it or apologize. Ava tries to shrug it off without causing too much of a scene but it doesn’t work. Luckily, Sara notices and grabs the man’s hand before shoving him away, causing him to almost fall backward. 

Sara glances back at Ava with concern in her eyes, silently asking if she’s okay. Ava just nods her head and they carry on making their way out of the crowd of journalists. 

They make it to the car without any more incidences. Zari and Gary join them soon after and they head for Ava’s office. Zari is already on the phone trying to get a press conference ready together. 

“That was crazy-” Ava hears Gary saying to Behrad, the two of them are sitting in the back seats, and she’s not sure that Behrad is actually paying attention to Gary. but, before she can listen to the conversation any more, she feels her phone buzzing in her bag, which is sitting on the floor against her feet. 

Her mom’s face lit up the screen, with her name at the top. Ava slid the green button across the bottom of the screen and brought the phone up to her ear. 

“How are you, honey? I just saw the news, why wasn’t I told about this? I’m your mother, why did I find out about you running for President, through CNN?” Dorothy Heywood said through the phone, Ava scrunched her face up. 

She had completely forgotten to tell her family about her plans to run for President. Everything has been so hectic and stressful, it had been pushed to the very back of her mind. Her focus has been on the environmental initiative and getting all of her other work finalized before resigning, and focusing on her campaign. But her plans were very quickly crumbling at her feet, nothing seems to be going according to plan and it puts Ava on edge.

Now she has a very upset mom on the phone, and she has to dig herself out of that hole before she can even think about her speech confirming that she is in fact entering the race for the presidency. 

“I’m sorry mom, I’ve had a lot going on, I was going to call you to tell you about it. I just landed and the news has gotten out much sooner than it was planned to get out,” Ava says quickly, she tries to sound as apologetic as she possibly can but she just sounds tired. 

Dot picks up on it. Of course, she does, she’s her mom. She notices everything, even when she’s on the other side of the city. 

“Sweetheart, you sound tired. Have you been getting enough sleep?” Dot sounds worried. She knows her daughter tends to forget to take care of herself when she gets stressed. 

The last time Ava got stressed because of work, she basically cut herself off from everyone and barely ate or slept. She ended up in hospital after passing out at work, due to dehydration and mild malnutrition. Dot sat in the hospital with her for almost the entire time she was there, not wanting to leave her daughter alone in a hospital. Once she was discharged, Dot stayed at her house for a week or so to make sure that Ava was eating, drinking enough water, and sleeping. She made a bunch of food for her, enough to last the week, and a few more dishes to go in the freezer and since then she has made sure to drop off a few meals a week for Ava, just to make sure that she has something to eat. 

“You don’t need to worry, I’m fine, I’ve been sleeping fine.”

It’s a lie and both of them know it. The entire trip Ava was up most nights, working on filing paperwork and finalizing the most important things. She would go to sleep for a few hours and then wake up and go to events and repeat. 

“Please take care of yourself, sweetie, I love you and I’m very proud of you,” Dot says and Ava can hear the huge smile on her face as she says the last part. It makes her tear up a little, her mom makes sure to tell her and Nate that she is proud of them no matter what they do, she tells them both often, just how proud she is. But, it doesn’t make it feel any less emotional each time she says it. 

Ava quickly turns her head to look out of the window so that nobody can see the tears in her eyes. In doing so she realizes that they’re back at her office. 

“I love you too, mom, I’m sorry I have to go, we have to prepare for the press conference later on tonight,” Ava says before adding, “I’ll call you tomorrow, so we can have a real conversation, I love you.”

The call ends and they’re all rushing out of the car and into the Truman building. Security felt as though it took forever, but they’re all up in her office soon enough. Mick is already there working on the speech, he is sitting on the couch with a beer in his hand while his other one is typing away on the laptop in front of him.

“Boss,” he says with a slight nod of his head in acknowledgment of Ava’s presence in the room. 

“Rory,” Ava says in response, before collapsing onto her desk chair. “How is the speech coming along?” 

“Good,” he grunts before adding, “the first draft should be done in less than an hour.”

“Thank you,” Ava says, appreciating the fact that he gave her a time to work around. She can momentarily forget about the press conference and just take a minute to breathe. The past few weeks have been non-stop, this feels like the first time she hasn’t had to adhere to a schedule every second of the day. Zari has the other side of the conference handled, and Rory has the speech handled, meaning there is nothing for her to do. 

“Secretary Sharpe, I have a coffee for you and lunch,” Gary says as he nervously approaches her desk with a coffee in a to-go cup and her favorite sandwich in his hands. He places them down in front of her and steps backward, almost falling over some chairs in the process.

“Thank you, Gary,” Ava says before digging into the sandwich. It’s the first thing she has eaten since lunch the previous day. Her mind drifts back to the conversation with her mom, she knows that she needs to take better care of herself, but right now her job is her main priority things like food and sleep are pushed to the back of her mind. But she also knows that if she ends up in the hospital again because she neglected to take care of herself, that her mom will probably move in with her permanently just so she can keep an eye on her. 

While that seems like a good thing in theory because it means that she won’t have to worry about cooking for herself or anything like that because her mom would take care of it for her. But, she also remembers that she is a thirty-nine-year-old woman, she doesn’t need her mom to cook or remind her to drink and sleep enough; she can do that herself. 

She is quickly brought out of her thoughts by Rory who is standing in front of her desk holding a laptop out in front of him, the screen is pointing towards Ava and he has an expectant look on his face. 

“I’m sorry my head was elsewhere, what is it Rory?” she asks, her eyes glancing between the screen and Mick’s face.

He places the laptop on her desk and slides it closer to her before saying, “the speech is finished, thought you’d wanna take a look at it.”

“Thank you,” Ava says softly, a small smile twitching at the corners of her mouth. She abandons her lunch and pulls the laptop closer to her and begins reading it, making a few notes here and there. 

“That is perfect, I’ve added some notes to the side for a couple of things that maybe need changing up a little,” Ava tells him and hands the laptop back to him. 

“I’ll get to it,” he grumbles but doesn’t move anywhere, he just closes the laptop and sets it down on his lap. 

“Everything okay?” 

“Lita wanted me to tell you that she tried to call you but understands that you’re busy, but she says congrats boss, she’s excited because she turns 18 just before the election so she can vote for you,” he says and with that, he stands up and leaves the room, where he goes Ava has no idea. 

Ava makes a mental note that tomorrow she needs to not only call her mom for a catch-up, she also needs to call her niece. She figures that she should also give her brother a call too, they text almost daily, most of the time it’s just Nate sending her history memes or just regular memes that he thinks that she will find amusing. She never really understands them but humors him anyway and then they just fall into other conversations. 

“Okay, the press conference is scheduled for six pm, so we have plenty of time to make sure that everything is perfect,” Zari walks into the room, without looking up from her phone once, and sits down in the empty chair opposite Ava. “Have you eaten lunch yet? I made Gary get your favorite for you.”

“I tried to but I got distracted, did my mom put you up to this?” Ava looks at her with an unimpressed look. 

Zari finally looks up from her phone with a suspicious look on her face, “she called the office just as we got back and I don’t know what she said to Gary but he practically ran to get the food for you, it was a little embarrassing if you ask me.”

“Oh my god, I’m a grown woman,” Ava mumbles under her breath, bringing a hand up to wipe her face and letting out a big sigh. 

“She’s just worried about you, especially after last time this happened,” Zari says before shoving the sandwich back in front of Ava to try and get her to eat it. 

“Okay, okay, I will eat the damn sandwich,” Ava chuckles as Zari continues to shove it towards her. 

“Thank you, eat up and then meet us in the meeting room across the hall and we can go over the details for tonight,” Zari stands up and waits for Ava to start eating the sandwich before she leaves the room and Ava finally has a minute to herself. 

She sits back in her chair and takes a few deep breaths, and just tries to not let the stress take over. 

It doesn’t take long for her to finish her lunch and before she knows it she’s sitting in the middle of the meeting room across the hall listening to Zari go over the most important parts ahead of the press conference. Then they go over the finer details and Rory gives each of them a printed version of the finished speech. They all read over it and there is nothing more to add or change, it’s perfect in Ava’s eyes, it’s straight to the point and tells people her exact plans in terms of resigning from her position of Secretary of State and her other plans.

The meeting wraps up and they head over to the conference area. There’s still some time to kill before it officially begins, so they’re all just sitting around in the back area on the couches. 

Ava is hunched over her middle and index fingers lightly massaging her temples. Sara sits down beside her and looks at her with a raised brow.

“Are you okay?”

“Huh?” Ava pulls her hands away from her head and looks to her left to see Sara sitting beside her with a look on her face that resembles something like worry, “oh, yeah, I’m fine it’s just a headache, no big deal.”

Sara doesn’t look too convinced but she accepts it anyway and stands up from her seat beside Ava, she disappears around the corner for a little while before returning with Ava’s bottle of water from her office, and a water bottle for herself; probably to make it seem as though she didn’t just go for Ava’s because Sara’s bottle sits in her hands untouched. Ava accepts it gratefully and takes a few sips of it before placing it on the floor beside her feet. 

Meanwhile, Zari is sitting on the couch across from the two of them and is watching their every move. She has no idea why she didn’t just have Gary go and grab it for her, it is quite literally his job to do things like that for Ava. But, the soft smile Sara receives from Ava seems to be reason enough. 

Sara sits back down beside her and settles into a conversation with Behrad, who is sitting beside Zari on the opposite couch. Ava resumes her original position with her elbows resting on her knees and her fingers gently massaging her temples. Zari just watches her for a few moments with narrowed eyes, until Ava lifts her head and shoots up from the couch. Her eyes follow Ava’s every move as she begins pacing up and down the room, chewing on her bottom lip. 

“Ava, sit down, you’re making me dizzy,” Zari says and Ava just frowns at her and continues pacing up and down, earning an eye-roll from Zari in response. “You should probably get out there, it’s almost time.”

Ava’s pacing comes to a sudden halt, she looks as though she has crashed into an invisible wall. Her head snaps down to look at the watch on her left wrist like she doesnt quite believe Zari, and she only starts moving again when she sees the time for herself. 

She turns on her heel and strides towards the conference room, with her head held high, her back as straight as possible, and her hands tightly clasped together behind her back. It’s full of journalists and cameras, she stands behind the podium and clears her throat. 

“I want to thank you all for being here,” she says softly, before gathering her thoughts and clearing her throat for a second time. “The day that I became Secretary of State was the greatest day of my life. I came to DC on a field trip in high school and I went on a tour of the Capitol, most of the kids in my class couldn’t care less that they were there, but for me, it was the greatest experience of my life, we got to meet some senators and ask questions. It was then and there that I knew that politics was where I was supposed to be, I set this schedule out for myself, I knew exactly what I wanted to do and where I wanted to be and so far I have adhered to that schedule, down to the day. I am proud to be able to say that I have done everything that I set out to achieve.” Ava pauses for a moment as she glances around the room, at all of the different cameras that are dotted around. 

She very quickly gets back to her speech and stares into the camera and there’s a glimmer in her eyes of what looks to be a mixture of pride and excitement. 

“But, I could not have achieved any of that without my team alongside me,” Ava says glancing over at Zari, Gary, Mick, and a few people standing along the back wall. “But, as proud as I am of our work, it’s important for us to continue to move forward. I have been honored to be able to serve this country as Secretary of State for just over six years now, but it is very important for me to also move forward, which is why, as soon as the environmental initiative is finalized, I will be resigning from my role as Secretary of State; in order to enter the presidential race. But, this campaign is not about me or my goals, it is about you and making this country the best that it can be, for you, the people.” 

Once Ava’s speech is over she answers a few questions from the press before the conference is finally over and everyone can go home. 

Ava heads back to her office and sits down behind her desk and takes a quick sip of water before turning her focus to some important paperwork that needs to be finished and filed away by the end of the day. 

Zari popped her head in to let Ava know that she was heading home, Gary did the same very soon after. 

Ava carries on with her work, and as it nears eight pm she hears laughter coming from just outside of her office doors. She stands up from her desk with confusion written on her face because she thought that all of her team had gone home. Stepping through the doors she’s met with Sara, Behrad, and Charlie sitting on the couches just outside of her office, the three of them are hunched over something that is clearly amusing to them, but Ava can’t see what it is. 

She steps closer to them and clears her throat, causing their laughter to stop and their heads to snap in her direction. 

“What are you still doing here? It’s-” she glances down at the watch on her wrist, “it’s almost nine.”

Sara just rolls her eyes, because how many more times does she need to remind Ava that their job is to make sure that she is safe and that if they left before she did, then they wouldn’t be doing their jobs right. 

“We are supposed to be wherever you are, and you are here so we are here too,” Behrad says as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. Ava knows that they have to be there but she also knows that she is perfectly capable of getting home by herself. She also feels bad working this late, because they aren’t able to go home to their loved ones, she isn’t even sure that any of them have anyone to go home to but she still feels bad about it. 

But, she doesn’t let it show as she clasps her hands together behind her back and straightens her posture. “Right, yes, well in that case keep it down, I’m trying to work in there.”

She sees the smirk on Sara’s face at Ava’s attempt in scolding them. It seemed to work on Behrad just as it does on Gary and other subordinates, but not on her or Charlie. To them it’s amusing and that only annoys Ava more. This time she chooses to ignore them and turns her back on them before going back into her office.

Around ten pm, Ava thinks that she should probably head home so that she can eat, but also so her security team can head home. Ava gathers her things together, slipping her jacket over her navy blazer, and turns the lights out in her office before joining her security team in the hallway. 

Behrad and Charlie are already out of the building and waiting for them down at the car. Sara and Ava make their way through the halls in a comfortable silence, until Ava says, “you know you don’t always have to stay here with me, I have gotten myself home before I can do it again.”

“I know you can, I know you’re perfectly capable of taking care of yourself, but people can be very unpredictable and you’re officially a presidential candidate, we have to take care of you so you can sort the country out,” Sara jokes, but Ava can also hear the sincerity behind her words. 

“I suppose you’re right,” Ava says, holding her head up a little higher as a slight smile twitches at the corners of her mouth. 

They make it to the car and then to Ava’s townhouse without any issues. As per usual Sara insists on walking Ava to her door and waiting until she is safe inside, and mock saluting to her before she finally leaves Ava. Tonight is no different, she does exactly that and Ava rolls her eyes and pretends to find it annoying but in reality, she finds it rather amusing.


	5. five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Heywood family takeover Ava's day off, they celebrate a little until it gets ruined by a person from Ava's past.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Valentines Day! 
> 
> It's been a minute since I updated this story, I know I said it would only be a week but I got busier than expected and this was put on the back burner. But, we are back and hopefully, it was worth the wait :)

The days following Ava’s announcement are manic. She is drowning in paperwork that needs signing off and finalizing before she officially resigns. However, it becomes abundantly clear to Zari that Ava wasn’t sleeping so she makes her take a day off, to which Ava heavily objects, but very quickly changes her mind and agrees to it when Zari threatens to call her mom and let her know that she isn’t taking care of herself. 

Which is how she finds herself awake at nine-thirty in the morning with nothing to do. Having already been on a run, showered, and had breakfast, she feels a little lost, not having to follow a schedule every second of the day, but she supposes that she should probably get used to it for the time being because she isn’t going to be Secretary of State for much longer. 

She sits down on her couch and turns on the TV that hasn’t been used for a long, long time. It’s surprising that the batteries in the remote still work. She leaves a random sitcom on that she has never seen before but she recognizes the name, it appears to be about the NYPD, but other than that she has no idea what is going on. 

She remembers overhearing a conversation between Sara and Behrad, the two of them had been talking very passionately about a tv show that revolves around a precinct in New York, and she thinks that maybe it’s the same show; but she can’t be sure. She also remembers them trying to convince her to watch it and when she told them that she doesn’t really watch TV they looked at her as though she had two heads. 

It doesn’t really matter anyway, she isn’t paying any attention to it, it is just there to provide a bit of background noise for her while she goes about her day.

The TV is playing to itself as she goes into the kitchen to make breakfast for herself. It wasn’t anything special, but at least it was something. 

The rest of the morning passes by slower than ever, her fingers itching to do some work, but Zari wouldn’t let her bring anything home with her, and truth be told, there wasn’t much more for her to do as the days grew closer to her official resignation as US Secretary of State. 

She sits down for all of twenty minutes, just staring at the TV screen in front of her, but she very quickly gets bored of it and turns it off. She stands up from the couch and looks around the room in an attempt to find something to occupy her mind. When she can’t think of anything, she turns to cleaning. 

The entire townhouse gets a deep clean. 

It is so clean that she can see her reflection on most surfaces.

The thing about Ava is, she is a stress cleaner, and her stress levels right now are through the roof, so she starts cleaning the inside of her cupboards. All of the cupboard food is emptied out onto the floor and on the kitchen counters. She scrubs the insides of them until they look brand new, even though they weren’t exactly dirty, to begin with.

She’s knelt on the floor surrounded by cans, jars of pasta, and her collection of cleaning supplies. It isn’t a problem until there’s a knock on her front door. 

It makes her jump slightly because she wasn’t expecting it, her feet knock some cans over in the process of her attempting to stand up. She contemplates whether or not to pick them up, but ultimately decides that they can wait and she hurries over to answer the door. She pulls the door open to see Nate standing there with a bottle of her favorite wine and a cake, Amaya by his side holding Ava’s favorite flowers in her hands. 

A huge smile breaks out onto Ava’s face when she sees them standing there, she’s over the moon to see them. It has been a long time since they have been able to just hang out, and even though they text each other almost every day it just isn’t the same. 

“Hi! Come in,” Ava says before wrapping her arms around her brother and quickly letting go of him, and pulling Amaya into a tight hug when they pulled away from one another Amaya gave her the flowers. “They’re beautiful, thank you.” 

The three of them head into the kitchen so that she could put the flowers in a vase with some water. 

“Did someone try to rob your canned food?” Nate teases when they see all of the contents of her cupboards spread out across the floor. Ava just turns and glares at him. 

“No, I’m cleaning, or I was,” Ava steps over the things scattered across the floor and grabs a vase from the top shelf of a cupboard, she fills it up with water and places the flowers in it before placing them on the window sill just above the sink. They’re bright blue hyacinths mixed with white ones. A soft smile twitches at the corners of her lips as she looks at them. 

“What are you guys doing here?” Ava questions as she hands them a glass of water each. 

“It’s good to see you too Ava,” Nate says with a playful glare shot in Ava’s direction. 

She’s quick to correct herself, “no, no I didn’t mean it like that, I just- you guys never come unannounced, did mom send you over to check that I’ve been taking care of myself? Because I have, she just- well you know how she is.”

“Relax, I was joking, we just thought we’d come by to congratulate you, also we haven’t seen you for a long time and I-” Nate clears his throat when Amaya’s elbow meets his rib cage, “we missed you, it’s a good job we came over, it’s a little sad that you’re cleaning your cupboards on your day off, you should be celebrating!”

“Oh, well I missed you guys too, I will put all of this back, and then we can celebrate I guess, although there’s nothing to celebrate really,” Ava shrugs her shoulders and clasps her hands together, “it’s not like I have won anything, I just announced that I’m running.”

“We should celebrate the fact that you’re a step closer to your dream, that’s a lot more than most people can say, so we are celebrating,” Amaya says leaving no room for argument. 

“Okay, you can make yourself comfortable in the living room while I clear this away,” Ava waves her hand in the area where the floor is covered in cans. 

Nate and Amaya nod their heads, knowing that Ava would not be able to relax with the thought of leaving the kitchen in the state that it’s in. So they go and sit down on the couch with their drinks in hand and quickly find themselves drawn to what’s playing on the tv. 

It doesn’t take long for Ava to finally join them with a drink of her own. She sits down on the armchair in the corner and watches the rest of the episode with them, which she has to admit is pretty entertaining. 

“Since when do you watch Brooklyn Nine-Nine?” Nate questions, his face a little scrunched up with confusion because Ava is absolutely not the type of person to just sit down and watch a random tv show in the middle of the day. 

“I heard Sara talking about it with Behrad, and I was searching through Netflix and saw it,” Ava says as if it’s the most obvious thing ever. 

“Sara huh? You seem pretty taken by this bodyguard of yours, I swear every conversation we have had lately ends up with her being mentioned,” Nate raises a brow at his sister and her face turns a bright red color before she sits up a little straighter and hardens her face. 

“She is my bodyguard, that is completely inappropriate!” Ava exclaims but neither of them are convinced by it. Her face gives her away, by the blush covering her cheeks and the slight smile that threatened to take over Ava’s lips when Nate mentioned Sara’s name. “She’s- we- I don’t have those kinds of feelings for her, we’re friends, I am basically her boss! Besides I can’t be seen with anybody in that way, not if I want to be President.”

Nate and Amaya share a subtle sad look. 

The last time that Ava was in a serious relationship she was fresh out of college and it ended within six months because she was too focused on her career. Since then she hasn’t been with a single person, not for lack of feelings towards other people but because she doesn’t put herself out there due to fear. Fear that she will be rejected and have her heartbroken because she’s too much and not enough at the same time. 

As much as she likes to give off the idea that she’s an independent person and that she doesn’t need anybody, it’s clear to the people around her that she is lonely. She definitely doesn’t need anybody but Nate knows his sister and knows that she wants to meet her person. The person that understands her fully and won’t get mad or upset with her when she has to work long hours. She just wants a person to love her, for who she is. 

She’s never said this out loud but she doesn’t need to. It’s clear that she wants that when she sees other people happy in serious relationships. She gets a sad look in her eyes and becomes quieter than usual. She’s seen almost everyone around her settle down and have serious relationships while she focuses on her work. While that does make her happy, because she loves her job, it doesn’t exactly fill the gap in her heart that is reserved for love. 

Ava notices the look shared between the two of them and she feels a little uncomfortable. She’s fine just the way she is, or at least that’s what she tries to convince herself. She doesn’t like the fact that they’re looking at her with pity in their eyes. She is happy the way she is. 

Ava clears her throat and the two of them look away and back at the TV, she quickly changes the subject, “so what have you been up to since the last time we talked?” 

The last time they talked was two days ago so they probably haven’t done anything other than work, but Ava just needs the attention off of her and her love life; or lack thereof. 

“Just work, it’s been pretty crazy with finals coming up, mom has been calling almost every day to make sure we have enough food, oh they’re coming over when Dad is home from work,” Nate says and Ava’s lips twitch as a soft smile works its way onto her face. 

Dot can be overbearing at times but she means well and Ava hasn't seen her for a while so she’s excited to see her, and Hank too. She doesn’t speak to him nearly as often as she does Dot but they keep up with one another often enough to know what is going on in one another’s life. 

“Mom was pissed when she found out that I’m running through the news, she called me just before the conference a couple of days ago, I meant to call her and you guys too but everything got out before we wanted it to, and before that, we were going around Europe to try and get countries to join the environmental initiative,” the words tumble from Ava’s mouth as if she is in a rush to explain herself to them, even though she has absolutely no need to. They understand how hectic her job gets, and that she puts that job above all else most of the time but she still feels bad that they had to find out through the news. 

“It’s okay, Ava you have a lot on your plate, besides the press are like vultures it was inevitable that they were going to find out before you wanted them to,” Nate says with Amaya nodding her head in agreement beside him.

“I guess you’re right,” Ava says softly.

“How was Europe anyway, we haven’t talked about that yet,” Amaya says excitedly. She has always wanted to go to Europe to see places like the Eiffel Tower and the Colosseum, but the last few years have been too busy for her and Nate to get as far as Europe. The last vacation they went on was a camping trip in Seattle. Which was nice, but it’s not exactly the most relaxing thing ever. 

“It was stressful, I had so much work to do and then Sara and I got trapped in an elevator in Paris, which was- it was awful, but I’m glad she was with me because she helped to calm me down. London was the worst, Hunter was a jerk as always, and Sara’s team were acting like children.”

“You got trapped in an elevator? What happened?” Nate asks, the worry clear in his voice because he knows how much Ava hates them. 

“We were heading back to the hotel after the Paris event and I left my phone in the car, so I went back to get it and Sara is a little overprotective, she doesn’t even let me walk from the car to my front door alone, but that’s beside the point,” she waves her hands around in front of her and carries on speaking, “I- uh- I had a panic attack and she helped me through it and then we just talked until help arrived.”

“You talked?” Nate says a little shocked. Ava is not particularly a conversationalist, especially around new employees, but Sara seems different to her, in a way that neither women probably realize yet. But, Nate and Amaya have never seen Ava talk about somebody this way before, not even her last girlfriend. 

“Yes, we talked, she told me about her sister so I told her about you guys and mom and dad, and then we talked about Pam and Randy,” Ava explains, feeling a little defensive, because of the slight smug look on Nate’s face. 

Amaya lightly elbows him in the ribs when she notices the look on his face, “she sounds lovely, Ava, I’m glad she was there with you.”

“Yeah me too,” Ava’s voice is quiet and her cheeks turn pink as a small smile twitches in the corners of her lips. Before it can become a full smile she clears her throat and turns her attention towards the TV, she has no idea what is going on but she is suddenly very interested in whatever is going on. 

She watches as a dark-haired woman gets excited over being able to use a new binder, but her friend quickly shuts her down. 

Meanwhile, Nate and Amaya watch her with matching smiles on their faces, as she tries to ignore the weight behind her own words. Her eyes are trained on the screen, not even glancing up for a second, because she doesn’t want them to see the blush on her cheeks, even though they can already see it because her cheeks are practically glowing.

“She’s a lot like you, you know,” Nate comments, offhandedly in an attempt to break the silence between them.

“Wha- how is she like me?” Ava questions, her nose a little scrunched up at the comment.

“She likes to organize things with binders and sticky notes.”

“A lot of people like to be organized Nate, that doesn’t make us alike.”

“No, she likes to be organized on an inhumane level, like you, she has binders for everything and she has a favorite font, you and her are the only people I know of to have a favorite font.”

“Binders are great for organization, it would be impossible to do my job without them, chaotic even, besides it’s not weird to have a favorite font, it’s perfectly normal,” Ava says looking towards Amaya for back-up, even though she knows that Amaya is no good with technology and absolutely doesn’t have a favorite font. 

“I never said that it was weird, I just meant that it’s unique, not many people use one font religiously,” Nate attempts to dig himself out of the hole that he put himself in. 

Ava just laughs at him and his discomfort. 

In return, he mumbles, “whatever nerd.”

“Shut up,” Ava says with narrowed eyes. But, there is no real bite behind her words, it’s just normal sibling banter. Until her face drops in realization, “wait, you said mom and dad were coming over for dinner?” Nate nods his head. “I have no food, oh my god, I am never going to hear the end of this from mom, I have to go to the store and think of something to make.”

Ava gets up from the couch and begins walking towards the kitchen, only to be stopped in her tracks when Amaya grabs onto her hand.

“Dot said that she was making something when she called us earlier, you don’t have to make anything, we have the desert, you don’t have to do anything, this dinner is to celebrate you and your achievements, sit down and relax Ava,” Amaya says, her voice is gentle and there is no way that Ava can say no to her, so she lets go of her hand and sits back in her original spot on the couch.

The rest of the afternoon passes by very quickly, a lot quicker than any of them realized. One second it was just past noon and they were watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine, with Nate making small comments and explaining some things when Ava looks a little lost, and the next minute Dot and Hank are walking through the door with dishes of food in their hands and Dot is so excited to see Ava she almost drops the dish. Luckily Nate takes it from her and takes it to the kitchen with Hank and the other dishes, while Dot pulls Ava into a tight hug. 

“I am so proud of you!” Dot exclaims squeezing Ava’s shoulders. 

“I haven’t done anything yet, mom,” Ava attempts to brush off the pride and excitement radiating from Dot.

Her comment causes the older woman to pull back from the hug. She looks up at her daughter with her nose scrunched up and moves her hands to rest on her shoulder so that Ava looks at her. 

“You have done so much, I wish you that you wouldn’t be so critical of yourself all of the time, Ava. I will always be proud of you no matter what, the same as I am with Nathaniel and Amaya, you make me proud every day of your lives,” Dot says, and her face is no longer scrunched up. Instead, she is looking up at Ava with a smile so big that it stretches from ear to ear, and there’s a glimmer in her eyes that makes Ava believe every word that she has just said.

Ava pulls her into a hug and mumbles, “Love you, mom.”

“I love you too sweetheart, now let’s go and see what your father is doing”

The two of them head into the kitchen and find Hank, Nate, and Amaya all standing around the island. The place is still sparkling, and Dot almost looks surprised at how clean the place is, with how busy Ava has been lately. But, at the same time, she doesn’t really expect anything less from her daughter, because she knows that Ava cannot possibly relax unless the place is organized and clean.

Dot quickly gets to work with dinner. It is all prepared and all there is to do is put it in the oven to heat up, and that’s exactly what she does. 

While they’re waiting for the food to cook, Nate moves from his seat at the kitchen island and begins to open and close various cupboards, in search of some snacks. 

“Ava, your cupboards are a little sad, where are all of the snacks?” He questions and Ava just rolls her eyes in response. 

Dot very quickly moves around the kitchen and ushers him out of the room after placing a glass of wine in his hand. Hank and Amaya are also sent out of the room with him, so that they can ‘relax’ as Dot puts it. 

“Sweetheart I have this under control, get comfy and have some wine,” Dot says in an attempt to get Ava to just sit down and let her do it all for her. They are there to celebrate her after all. But Ava feels bad that her mom is doing all of the work, even though she is very happy to do so. “Go, I’ve got this.”

So she does, she knows there is no point in trying to argue over it, Dot wins every time. She fills her wine glass up and joins the others in the living room until they’re called to the table to eat. 

After dinner, Ava cleans away the dishes with the help of Amaya and places them all in the dishwasher. She wipes down the countertops, even though they’re already sparkling from her cleaning spree earlier that morning. 

“Would you like more wine?” Ava asks from where she is standing at the island.

“Please,” Amaya says as she hangs the towel over the oven’s handle and steps closer to Ava. 

She watches as Ava pours wine into each of their glasses, and it’s almost as if Ava can sense her eyes on her, as she says, “what? Is there something on my face?” She doesn’t even wait for Amaya to respond and just starts wiping her hands over her face, feeling a little self-conscious. 

“No, you don’t have anything on your face.” Amaya chuckles. “It’s just- I know you’re probably sick of hearing this, but it really is amazing that you’re doing this. It’s brave and I don’t know anybody who cares about making the world a better place as much as you do, you’re going to do great.”

Ava’s cheeks blush a dark pink color at the compliment and her head ducks down to try and hide it, but it doesn’t really work. Her cheeks are now a bright red color. “I- uh- thank you, that means a lot, I’m still trying to wrap my head around it all, I think when I hand in my letter of resignation tomorrow, it will start to feel somewhat real.”

“Tomorrow? That happened fast,” Amaya thinks out loud. 

Ava bobs her head up and down as she takes a large sip of wine, “yeah, we managed to get everything fast-tracked and got it all finalized and ready to go, so the campaign starts officially tomorrow,” Ava says, a proud smile working its way onto her face, no matter how hard she fights to keep it away. 

“Are you excited?”

“Yeah, I am nervous too. I have no idea what to expect and Zari has all these people lined up for me to meet, so we can narrow down who will be joining the team.”

“That sounds exhausting, how is Zari? It’s been a while since I last saw her,” Amaya asks, changing the subject slightly because she can see the anxiety building in Ava. Her eyes are a dead giveaway because she starts to avoid eye contact and Amaya knows that she still has doubts over whether she is doing the right thing or not; and no matter how many people tell her that it is. It doesn’t stop the nagging voice in her head telling her she has thrown away her career, over a silly childhood dream. By her asking about Zari, brings Ava away from her thoughts and allows her to focus on her best friend. 

“She’s good, she’s still with Constantine,” Ava rolls her eyes, to show her disdain towards the man. “But he makes her happy so that’s all that matters.” And she genuinely means it, as much as she dislikes the man, he makes her best friend happy and he treats her well, and that is all she wants for her, is to be happy and feel loved. 

The two of them talk a little more, about anything and everything that comes to their minds. Until they get a little uncomfortable sitting on the bar stools and decide to join the others in the living room. 

Ava sits down beside Dot and Amaya joins Nate on the couch opposite. 

“Thank you for doing all of this mom, it was really nice,” Ava says softly, Dot reaches over and lightly squeezes Ava’s hand. 

“Oh sweetheart, you’re welcome, we did plan to take you out to dinner in a fancy restaurant, but Nate said that you had the day off so we thought you would prefer to stay home where you can relax,” Dot explains and it only makes Ava’s heart swell a little more with happiness. Her mom cares so much and she doesn’t think she will ever get over the fact. 

“It was perfect, I’ve missed you guys,” Ava says softly and Dot squeezes her hand once again. 

“We have missed you too sweetheart, I know we get to talk on the phone but it’s just not the same,” a sad expression flashes across Dot's face, but she composes herself before Ava can notice. 

Ava nods her head in agreement, because as much as she does like talking to her family on the phone. Nothing beats just sitting in the same room as them and just listening to whatever conversation is happening. Until she realizes that Nate has been talking about the same thing for over thirty minutes, and there’s only so much history a person can take. 

She listens as Nate talks about some tomb in Egypt that has recently been discovered. He’s talking animatedly about it, his hands flailing about and his eyebrows raise every time he gets to an interesting part of the story. When he takes a small pause in the story, Ava takes the opportunity to excuse herself and pour some more wine out for herself. 

She fills her glass with wine, but doesn’t go back to the living room immediately. Instead, she stands leaning against the counters, looking out of the window at the empty street illuminated only by the street lights. She takes a sip of her wine before fishing her phone from her back pocket. 

She unlocks it and her fingers hover over Sara’s contact, contemplating whether or not she should text her to tell her she watched Brooklyn Nine-Nine. One on hand she knew that she probably shouldn’t if she wanted to keep their relationship strictly professional. Even though they probably crossed that line in Paris when they got to talking in the elevator. And on the other hand, she doesn’t care for keeping their relationship strictly professional because she likes to talk to Sara, because it’s comfortable between them; in a way that Ava hasn’t really felt with another person ever. 

In a moment of bravery, she taps on the contact card and writes a text out, deleting and changing parts more than once. She reads it over five times before pressing the send button, because she starts to doubt herself, thinking that Sara might find it weird that she is texting her. But after staring at the screen for a few minutes, she decides to just do it. 

‘Hi Sara, thank you for recommending Brooklyn Nine-Nine, I watched a few episodes today and I thought it was great.’

Ava writes it out and reads it over before deleting it and writing out a new text. 

‘Hello,’ nope too formal she thinks and deletes it. ‘Hi, thank you for recommending Brooklyn Nine-Nine, it saved me from a little bit of boredom this morning.’ She hits send and tries not to think about it too much. ‘Oh, this is Ava by the way :)’

Ava goes back into the living room and sits back in her original seat. Nate isn't talking about the tomb anymore, instead, he and Hank are wrapped up in a conversation about god knows what. Meanwhile, Amaya and Dot are chatting about It doesn’t take long for Sara to respond. It’s probably only a couple of minutes later when her phone buzzes and the notification pops up. She unlocks the screen and turns it slightly so that Dot can’t read it, she has no idea why she does that because Dot wouldn’t invade her privacy like that, but she just feels like she should after Nate and Amaya teased her earlier that day. 

‘You caved huh? And here I was thinking Ava Sharpe did nothing other than work ;) I’m glad you liked it, maybe we can watch it together sometime, I will provide the wine.’

Ava reads the text a couple of times to make sure she isn’t making it all up, and that Sara actually suggested that. She reads it again and her cheeks flush a dark pink color. However, she doesn’t have the chance to respond to the text because her phone rings, and a number she doesn’t know is at the top of the screen. 

“Hello?” She answers the phone hesitantly, unsure as to who could be calling and how they got her number. 

“Ava?” A woman says on the other end. She would recognize that voice anywhere and it makes Ava’s body tense up and freeze in a way that nobody has been able to make her do since high school. Her whole demeanor changes and the wall that she is building around herself is clear for everyone to see. 

She glanced up from the floor and sees four pairs of concerned-looking eyes on her. 

“What do you want Pam?” Ava snarls. 

How dare she call her after all of these years of no communication. The last time she spoke to her biological mom was a few weeks after they kicked her out. Ava agreed to meet up with her in hopes that she might have changed her mind. But when she got there it was the complete opposite, she was met with leaflets for various conversion camps and her mom saying that she could fix her and they would take her back once she was fixed. Ava got up and left so fast and when she got back to the Heywood’s house, she fell into Dot's arms in tears. Dot assured her that she was perfect as she was and she didn’t need to change a single thing about herself. 

“You better keep mine and your father’s name out of your mouth when you’re doing your little show of running for president.”

Ava is baffled for a moment. She has never mentioned them once and she probably never will because she has barely given them a single thought since she was a teenager. Why would she talk about the people who were supposed to love her unconditionally, but instead tried to make her into something that she wasn’t and then threw her out onto the streets when they couldn’t change her.

Pam takes Ava’s silence and strides with it. “I hope you know that nobody is going to vote a lesbian into office, this country doesn’t need you encouraging that disgusting lifestyle, the children in this country especially don’t need to see you flaunting it about, do you know how damaging that will be to them? It’s-”

“Shut up.” Ava’s voice is steady but there’s a bite behind it, that leaves no room for argument. “You do not get to call me after twenty years to harass me like that, you have no power over me anymore. I do not care what you think of me or how I choose to live my life, and I especially do not care how you vote. In fact, I’m glad you won’t vote for me, I don’t need a homophobic, self-righteous person to vote for me, I don’t need your help, I haven’t for a long time. Don’t call this number ever again.” Ava says and throws the phone onto the couch before storming out of the room. 

Nate moves from where he’s sitting on the opposite couch and picks up the phone from the couch, to make sure that the call has ended, and in doing so he accidentally sees the text messages exchanged between Sara and Ava. It’s not like he meant to invade her privacy and read them, they were right there on the screen, it’s hard not to read them. 

However, he decides to ignore them because Ava definitely doesn’t need to be teased about Sara right now. She just needs her family to be there for her. He tells Dot to sit down and that he will go and talk to her, Dot does so, reluctantly. 

He goes in search of her and finds her sitting on her bed with her head in her hands and her elbows resting on her knees. He lightly knocks on the door and Ava just lets out a soft grunt in acknowledgment. He takes that as a sign that he can enter and slowly walks over to her and sits down beside her, he doesn’t say anything because he knows that she doesn’t need him to; she just needs somebody to be there. His arm wraps around her shoulder and she leans into it immediately lifting her head from her hands and lets it rest against his chest. 

“I’m okay you know, I just- it took me by surprise, I don’t know how she found my number,” Ava mumbles causing Nate to tighten his grip around her. 

“You know it’s okay if you aren’t okay Ava, you are allowed to feel things. It’s natural she calls you out of the blue after over twenty years, and you just expect yourself to be okay with that?” Nate says and Ava shrugs him off and pulls away from him.

“I am okay, like I said it was just a little surprising,” Ava says, but the lie is clear in her voice and in her eyes. They’re dull and sad looking, she also looks as though she could burst into tears at any moment. But, she stands up from the bed and walks out of the room, leaving Nate sitting there confused. He follows her downstairs and finds her sitting on the couch, and Dot is fussing over her but Ava reassures her that she is okay, but nobody believes her. 

The conversation carries on as normal though. Ava just sits and listens to them talk around her, she doesn’t really try to get involved and instead spends most of the time picking at her nails. It goes on like that for at least another hour before she stands up and says, “I’m going to bed, thank you for today it was lovely, you’re free to stay just, uh lock up when you leave, goodnight.”

They all stand up and she hugs each of them. 

“You get some sleep sweetheart, call me if you need anything okay?” Dot says and Ava nods her head before letting the smaller woman pull her into a rib-crushing hug. 

Everyone else gets ready to leave as Dot is hugging her and making sure that she will actually call her if she needs her. After that, they all say their goodbyes again and leave the townhouse. Well, everybody but Nate. He locks the door behind them and turns on his heel to look at his sister.   
“What are you doing?” She questions him with her brows furrowed. 

“I’m staying, I thought we could have a sleepover, you know like we did whenever one of us was having a hard time in college,” Nate says, referring to the times when one of them would either be homesick, or stressed, or just weren’t feeling good in general, the other would drive over and they would have a sleepover and marathon documentaries. Luckily, their colleges were only a couple of hours away from each other so it wasn’t too difficult to get to one another. It always helped them to feel better, and Nate hopes that it will work in this case too. 

“What about Amaya?”

“She’s fine, she knows that you don’t like to feel crowded and she has to work early tomorrow anyway. Now, would you like a cup of tea and we can watch a serial killer doc of your choice,” Nate suggests and it brings a little smile onto Ava’s face. 

She nods her head and Nate orders her to go and sit on the couch while he makes the tea and gathers the blankets. She does exactly that and they watch documentaries well into the early hours of the morning, only moving from the couch when they feel their backs starting to hurt.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed it!! Let me know your thoughts, and come and scream about Avalance with me on Twitter (@Direct0rsharpie) and Tumblr (@directorsharpie).


End file.
